HHT #172 - Benchmarking Home Health, Hospice, and Private Duty

 

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Benchmarking Home Health, Hospice, and Private Duty Home Care

Gathering Data to Compare Your Agency to the Industry

October 28, 2009

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In this issue...

-- Benchmarking in Home Health Care

-- Benchmarking in Private Duty Home Care

-- Leading Home Care Partners with the Accreditation Commission for Health Care

-- Please Participate in the 2009 Private Duty Home Care Benchmarking Survey

-- How Certified Home Health Agencies Can Succeed in Private Duty Home Care

-- About the Author

-- Permission to Reproduce

Welcome,

Welcome to this issue of Home Health Care Today, the leading electronic newsletter for home health care and hospice executives who want to grow their business and get ready for the future. Every other Wednesday, we bring you strategies and insights that will help you take your agency to new heights.

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.


Benchmarking in Home Health Care

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Over the past few years, one of the most frequently asked questions in home care is, "How can we benchmark our performance against other companies in our industry?" In home health care and hospice, there is plenty of data available that will enable you to compare the performance of your agency to other agencies in our industry.

Recently, two companies serving the industry have released their latest benchmark data for home health. Decision Health, publisher of Home Health Line, and Outcome Concept Systems, have released their Home Care Elite. This is a list of the top 500 companies and the top 100 companies based on three specific criteria.

This data enables you to compare your agency's performance to the top 100 companies in the industry.

Benchmarking is the process of comparing the business processes and performance metrics to another that is widely considered to be an industry standard benchmark or best practice. Essentially, benchmarking provides a snapshot of the performance of your business and helps you understand where you are in relation to a particular standard.

The term benchmarking was first used by cobblers to measure people's feet for shoes. They would place someone's foot on a "bench" and mark it out to make the pattern for the shoes. Benchmarking is most used to measure performance using a specific indicator resulting in a metric of performance that is then compared to others.

Also referred to as "best practice benchmarking" or "process benchmarking", it is a process used in strategic management, in which organizations evaluate various aspects of their processes in relation to best practice companies. The benchmarking process is usually done within a peer group defined for the purposes of comparison. This then allows organizations to make improvements or adapt specific best practices, usually with the aim of increasing some aspect of performance.

Benchmarking may be a one-time event, but is more often treated as a continuous process in which organizations continually seek data and information to improve their practices and processes.


Benchmarking in Private Duty Home Care

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Since 2003, we've been asked on a regular basis for data that can be used by private duty home care companies for benchmarking. Company owners have asked for information they can use to compare their performance to other non-medical home care companies.

Up to this point, there has been little data available. There is no central repository for private duty data. On the home health and hospice side, it's much easier because CMS collects data as part of the Medicare program, and that data is available as public information. Companies like Outcome Concept Systems, Strategic Healthcare Programs, Fazzi Associates, and Healthcare Market Resources access Medicare data and provide comparison services to their clients and customers.

At Leading Home Care, we have accumulated data from a variety of sources over the past six years. These sources have included surveys by other publishing companies, surveys by associations, and surveys we have conducted of the readers of Home Health Care Today and Private Duty Today. We have also collected anecdotal data from the hundreds of home care companies we work with each year.

Now, it's time to have some significant performance data that we can use to benchmark performance in private duty home care.


Leading Home Care Partners with the Accreditation Commission for Health Care

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Marketing your Specialty Home Health Care ServicesLeading Home Care is pleased to announce a new strategic alliance with the Accreditation Commission for Health Care, based in Raleigh, NC, to sponsor the largest survey of private duty home care companies ever conducted.

The 8,000 readers of Private Duty Today will be asked to participate in the initial survey. Participants in our Academy for Private Duty Home Care held around the country will be asked to participate as part of our pre-program survey.

The result will be a significant body of data that will be available to owners, administrators, and CEOs of private duty home care companies to compare performance against the industry.

We applaud Tom Cesar and his team at ACHC for beginning this research by developing performance standards for accrediting non-medical home care companies. Working with Tom and his team, we've defined the specific data points that home care owners are interested in, and we've developed a unique survey to gather this data.

For More Information on Accreditation of Home Health, Hospice, DME, or Private Duty


Please Participate in the 2009 Private Duty Home Care Benchmarking Survey

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We invite and encourage you to participate in this survey if:
1. You have a private duty home care business as part of your certified home health agency.

2. You are a free standing private duty home care company.

3. You are part of a franchise organization.

4. You are a private duty company affiliated with another healthcare organization.

The more home care companies that participate in the survey, the more likely we are to have valid data that you can use to benchmark your processes and performance.

As an incentive for you to share your data with us, we will make the final report available at a significant discount to those who choose to take the survey.

To participate in the survey click on the link below.

2009 Private Duty Today Benchmarking Survey


How Certified Home Health Agencies Can Succeed in Private Duty Home Care

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Two weeks ago I spoke at the NAHC Annual Conference on the topic, "How Certified Home Health Agencies Can Succeed in Private Duty Home Care." It was one of the more rewarding presentations I have given in recent years because of the level of participation from the audience, and the number of people who stayed around after the program to ask questions.

It's clear that Private Duty Home Care is a hot topic among certified agencies.

If you have a private duty business within or affiliated with your home health agency or hospice, you'll want to consider having your Director come to Louisville, KY on December 2, 2009 for the Academy for Private Duty Home Care. This is a one-day institute designed to help owners, administrators, and CEOs of private duty companies grow their businesses.

We've made a special deal with the luxurious Brown Hotel in downtown Louisville so that we can include your hotel accommodations in with the registration fee.

We're also delighted to have two state home care associations as co-sponsors of this event. The Kentucky Home Health Association and the Indiana Association for Home and Hospice Care are both making special packages available to their members. If you are a member of either of these wonderful associations, please go to their web site to register. If not, click on the link below.

If you are serious about growing your private duty business, you'll want to be in Louisville on December 2 for the Academy for Private Duty Home Care.

Register today!


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 & hospice 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."


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