HHT #155 - Assessing Your Current Reality

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Where is Your Home Health Agency Today?

Three Levels for Assessing Your Current Reality

March 4, 2009

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In this issue...

-- Assessing Your Current Reality

-- Leadership is the Key to Profitability in Home Health Care

-- Training Your Sales Representatives is a Key to Growing Your Agency in 2009

-- Recent Postings to our Home Health Care Leadership Minute BLOG

-- About the Author

-- Permission to Reproduce

Welcome,

... to Home Health Care Today, the leading electronic newsletter for home health care in America. This special report for CEOs and senior executives of America's leading home health care companies is published every other Wednesday by Leading Home Care ... a Tweed Jeffries company for our clients, friends, and advocates who want to grow their home health businesses.

For ideas to grow your Private Duty Home Care business, subscribe to Private Duty Today, the bi-weekly newsletter for non-medical home care CEOs. Your complimentary subscription is available at www.privatedutytoday.com.


Assessing Your Current Reality

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I was in Tulsa, Oklahoma yesterday, leading an executive strategy session for a home health agency there. We began the day by assessing the current reality of this growing home care company.

Whenever I lead home health care executive teams through this process, there are four cornerstones that we work with.

1. Assessment - Where are we now?

2. Direction - Where are we going?

3. Competitive Advantage - How do we differentiate our agency from our competitors?

4. Measurement - How do we measure our success?

In the assessment phase, there are three levels of information we take into consideration.

Intuitive - This is the level of feelings. We ask a series of questions to draw out the emotions of the team members:

  • How are you feeling right now about your agency?
  • What frustrates you most?
  • What are you most proud of?
  • If you could fix three things about your agency, what would you fix first?
  • What keeps you awake at night?

Getting your management team to express their feelings about the agency is a great way to get the planning process started. Beware! When you ask these questions, you'll hear some things you don't like. Avoid being defensive. Just listen.

Anecdotal - This is the level of examples. We ask some different questions to draw out examples of what is going on in and around your agency:

  • What are our most significant accomplishments in the past 12 months?
  • What are people saying about our agency?
  • What are our competitors doing differently?
  • What are our referral sources asking for?
  • What is the morale of our employees, and how do we know?

Quantitative - This is the level of numbers and data. Here are some questions you can ask:

  • How are we doing financially?
  • What do our other statistics show us about our agency?
  • How do we compare to industry benchmarks?
  • Which of our goals have we achieved?
  • Which of our goals have we missed?
  • Where are we investing in our business?

When you assess your current reality at these three levels using the questions we have provided, you will have a pretty clear snapshot of your agency as it exists today. The next step will be to decide on your future direction. What do you want your agency to look like five years from now?


Leadership is the Key to Profitability in Home Health Care

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Elizabeth Head ShotBy Elizabeth Jeffries, RN, CSP, CPAE

The home health care business is about providing nursing and therapy services to patients in their homes in exchange for something of equal value - money. When you do this business well, you generate a surplus of money above and beyond your expenses - you make a profit.

Whether you are a "for profit" or a "not-for-profit" home health agency, you still need to generate a surplus. You need to make a profit. When you make a profit, you have the resources to invest in your business, and to provide a return to the owners.

If you want to be profitable in home health care, I'm convinced that leadership is the key. Leadership is the process of influencing your people to get them to move in the direction you want them to go. When your team is in alignment with your agency goals, and they are all moving in the same direction, your agency will make a profit.

People frequently ask me, "How do you do leadership?" They want lists, methods, how-to's. They are so busy doing tasks, staying busy, and completing assignments that they often leave the office finished but not fulfilled.

In researching, studying, writing and speaking about leaders for more than 20 years, I am convinced that we have lots of managers in home health care, but not enough leaders. Managers control functions. Leaders influence people. In fact, the word manager comes from the Latin word manus, or hand. It originally referred to the hands on the reins of the horse. Managers control tasks and make the organization run.

Leaders establish direction and align people to work together. They move people to take action and inspire a shared vision of who they can be and what they can do. Positive leaders come from a place of service, not power. They value others. They affirm others and make them feel significant. They make the way, show the way, and light the way. And they hold people accountable for their actions.

Our experience and research shows that home health agencies that are led by servant leaders tend to be more profitable and grow faster than those agencies that do not have strong leadership.

How is your leadership team doing? What do they do to inspire and influence others to be better and to grow? What are you leaders doing to align the organization around a common direction and vision?

Here are some personal leadership questions you may want to ask yourself:

  • Have I discovered the mission and purpose for my life and career?
  • Can I define why I work and what legacy I want to leave in my agency?
  • Is my personal mission in alignment with that of my agency?
  • On a scale of 1 to 10, how strong is my passion for my current career and my agency?
  • What is my dream, or vision, for where I want to go both personally and professionally?
  • Can I share the top three values that define who I am?
  • How do my personal values affect my decisions and actions as a leader?
  • Are my personal values in alignment with the values of the agency?
  • What am I willing to do to align my personal mission, vision, and values with my agency?

About the Author: Elizabeth Jeffries, RN, CSP, CPAE, works with health care organizations that want to put their mission and vision into action, and with leaders who want to get more meaning from their work. Elizabeth is available to speak for your next home health care association conference, or your next company leadership event. Call Julie Raque at 502-339-0653 to check Elizabeth's availability.

Learn More About Elizabeth Jeffries, Speaker, Author, and Executive Coach.


Training Your Sales Representatives is a Key to Growing Your Agency in 2009

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CHCSP BrochureI've been on the go steadily for the last three months working with home health agencies across the country. While the rest of the economy is struggling, home health agencies are continuing to grow. The agency CEO's I'm talking with are aggressively looking for opportunities to grow their businesses and increase market share during 2009.

The single best method to increase referrals that turn into admissions is through direct sales calls on hospital discharge planners and physicians. Having an effective sales team in place is critical to your success in this highly competitive home health marketplace.

Home Health Agency Executives frequently ask us for help in recruiting and selecting sales representatives. There just aren't very many experienced people available. So we suggest that they hire for attitude and train for success. If you have a person with the desire to sell home health services, and the right behavioral style for selling, we can teach them the home health care sales process.

If you have some good people on board in your sales team, you'll want to send them to Louisville, KY next month for our Certified Home Care Sales Professional workshop. They will come together with a hundred or so other sales professionals, and our faculty members Dr. Tray Dunaway, Michael Giudicissi, and myself to explore the seven step home care sales process. They'll get practical, hands-on insights on how to get past the gatekeepers and have meaningful dialog with physicians and other key referral sources.

2009 Certified Home Care Sales ProfessionalTM workshop will be held in Louisville, Kentucky on April 1, 2, and 3, 2009 at the luxurious Brown Hotel. If you, or someone in your agency, wants to participate in the most in-depth sales training program in the home health care industry, you will want to be in Louisville in April.

Participants who complete this 15 hour training program will be on their way to earning the Certified Home Care Sales ProfessionalTM designation. This is the only earned designation for sales professionals in the home health care industry.

Learn more about the 2009 CHCSP workshop in Louisville!


Recent Postings to our Home Health Care Leadership Minute BLOG

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Visit our BLOG, Home Health Care Leadership Minute for Stephen Tweed's observations on the latest happenings in home health care around the world. The latest BLOG postings include:

  • Ohio Home Health Agency Issues Press Release about Muffins for Doctors
  • Obama Budget Proposal Cuts Money from Home Health Care
  • Do Female Executives Lack Vision?
  • Home Health Nurse Writes Editor about Information Technology
  • Gentive Refocuses on Home Health Care for the Elderly
  • Amedisys reports growth in Home Health Earnings
  • Celebrating 100 Years of Home Health Care

Visit Stephen Tweed's Home Health Care Leadership Minute


About the Author

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Stephen Tweed, CSP, is Chairman and CEO of Leading Home Care ... a Tweed Jeffries company. For over 25 years he has been a recognized leader in strategy and leadership development for home health care companies and associations. He is the author or co-author of seven books, five of which were written specifically for the home care industry. He has served on the boards of directors of three not-for-profit home care agencies, and has served as interim President & CEO of a $25 million home care company.

Stephen is a past-President of the National Speakers Association, a 3500 member international society of experts who speak professionally. He is also the father of a 38 year-old son who is physically disabled and uses the services of home care on a daily basis.

Meet the entire Leading Home Care Team


Permission to Reproduce

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Permission is granted to healthcare publications, associations and companies to reproduce this article in your publication, or to distribute copies to your leaders, on the condition that you reproduce the credits and contact information as follows: "Reprinted with permission from Home Health Care Today. Copyright 2009 Stephen C. Tweed. To receive a FREE subscription to this newsletter, log on to www.leadinghomecare.com."



Contact Leading Home Care

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phone: 1-866-209-5101

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