It’s a busy week for me, here at
Leading Home Care. Today, Wednesday, I’ll be conducting a
business strategy session for a group of ten team members from a home
health company from eastern Kentucky. Then on Friday and Saturday
I’ll be leading a Strategic Planning session for the board and
management team of a regional Hospice. On Sunday, it’s off to Las
Vegas for the National Association for Home Care Annual
Conference.
There’s a common theme for all of these events: Serve
More Patients.
As the CEO or a member of the executive team for a home
health agency or hospice, you have two major responsibilities: grow
your business and get ready for the future.
Why grow your business? To serve more patients!
If you really believe that you and your team are the very
best at what you do, then you need to serve more patients by providing
your home health and hospice services to as many people as
possible. For many year’s I’ve been working with leadership teams
on business growth strategies, marketing plans, and sales
training. It was all about growing the business.
Then a couple of weeks ago, I was getting ready for a
strategy retreat and I was interviewing some middle managers.
When I talked about growing the business, their eyes just sort of glazed
over. They love what they do. They believe in what they do.
They’re working hard. But they just don’t understand why their
agency needs to be bigger. I looked at the CEO and she just
rolled her eyes.
Then it struck me. I said to these managers, “Do you
believe that you provide better home health services than any other
agency in your marketplace?”
They all nodded their heads. So I said, “If you give
the best service and deliver the highest quality care, doesn’t everyone
deserve to be served by your agency?”
“What do you mean?” one person asked.
“If you are so good at what you do, shouldn’t every
patient want to be served by your agency? Shouldn’t every doctor
want his or her patients to be seen by your nurses? Shouldn’t every
hospital discharge planner want to put your agency on the top of their
list of choices for their patients?”
They all began to nod vigorously. They started to
get it. If we’re so good at what we do, everyone should come to
us for home health services. The trick is, we need to let them
know.
That is what sales and marketing in home health care is
all about. It’s about conveying to physicians, discharge
planners, social workers, and other referral sources the story about
why their patients deserve to be served by your home health
agency. While we’d love to prove it to them with facts and data
like home health compare quality scores, it’s usually the personal
stories that touch the heart and convince the buyer.
It’s hard to motivate your field staff nurses and
therapists to work harder to make more money for your agency’s bottom
line. But it’s easy to motivate them to work harder to serve more
patients, because they know that serving more patients, makes a
difference.
When we frame our business growth strategies in the picture
of serving more patients because they deserve the very best care, then
we have a story that touches the heart and makes a difference in the
minds of our referral sources.
Selling Home Health Care
to Physicians
As I mentioned, next week we'll be in Las Vegas, NV for
the 30th Annual Meeting
and Exposition of the National
Association for Home Care & Hospice. I've spoken at the
convention for 19 of the past 20 years. It's always a delight to
be there with thousands of home health, hospice, and private duty home
care leaders to catch up on the latest from Washington, hear what's new
in clinical care, see what's new in the trade show and network in the
exhibit hall.
This year is very special for me, as I'll be presenting a powerful
workshop on Selling Home Health to Physicians with my dear friend and
colleague, Dr. Tray Dunaway. Dr. Dunaway is a physician and surgeon
from Camden, SC and we've been working together since we met seven
years ago when we were both speaking for the Texas Association for Home
Care & Hospice. For several years, we did an annual workshop
on home health sales and marketing and this past years we've been
traveling around the country presenting "Selling Home Health
to Physicians".
If you're going to be in Las Vegas, please plan to join us on
Tuesday
morning, October 4, 2011 at 8:00a.m. for session number 611.
Building Relationships
with Physicians
If you can't be with us in Las Vegas, you can still hear Dr. Dunaway
and I discussing the principles of communicating with and building
relationships with physicians. Several years ago, Tray and I did
a series of teleseminars and recorded four, 1-hour segments.
If you and your sales and marketing team would like to have some lively
discussion and planning, then order
a copy of this four CD set. Organize a series of sale
training sessions. Download the handouts for the sessions, play
the audio CDs and lead an interactive discussion based on the questions
at the end of each handout.
As we go forward under health care reform, building relationships with
physicians will become a much more important part of the referral
mix. Start today by helping your sales people learn to serve more
patients by building relationships with physicians.
As
a CEO of a home health agency or hospice, it's important for you to see
the bigger picture of our industry by being aware of facts, trends and
data. Here's some of the latest facts, trends and data we've
seen:
1. President Barack Obama, on Monday, September 19,
2011, released his deficit reduction recommendations for the Joint
Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, also known as the
"super-committee". In his proposal, the President calls
for a home health copayment beginning in 2017 for new Medicare
beneficiaries who become eligible for Medicare in 2017, and
thereafter. This proposal recommends a home health copayment of
$100 per home health episode for those episodes with five or more
visits not preceded by a hospital or other inpatient post acute care
stay.
2. The new congressional Joint Select Committee on
Deficit Reduction is charged with coming up with a proposal by November
23 to achieve between $1.2 and $1.5 trillion in deficit
reduction. If the bipartisan 12 member super committee, equally
divided between Democrats and Republicans, is able to report out by
majority vote a proposal to achieve this goal, Congress must then vote
up or down on the proposal, without amendment, by December 23rd.
3. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services
(CMS) on September 21, 2011, posted revised hospice cost report forms
and specifications that are applicable for cost reporting periods
ending on or after July 31, 2011.
4. American Association of Medical Colleges is
projecting a nationwide physician shortage of 63,000 physicians by
2015, approximately 90,000 physicians by 2020 and anywhere between
130,000 and 160,000 physicians in 2025.
5. Under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care
Act, employers will be assessed an annual $3,000 per employee penalty
starting in 2014 if the health care coverage they provide is not
affordable. The penalty would apply in cases where an employee's
health insurance premium contribution exceeds 9.5% of household income,
making them eligible for federal premium subsidies to buy coverage
through state insurance exchanges.
6. Since Massachusetts enacted the Health Care
Reform Plan in early 2006, total health care employment per capita in
the state has grown more rapidly than in the rest of the
country. From January 2001 to December 2005, employment per
capita grew by just over 8% in both Massachusetts and the rest of the
country. Subsequently, health care employment grew faster in
Massachusetts, increasing by 9.5% from December 2005 through September
2010, while the rate of growth in the rest of the country was 5.5%.
Here's the latest discussions going on at Leading
Home Care Network on LinkedIn.
- How
do you use networking in the community to generate referrals?
- Upcoming
events in home health, hospice and private duty home care.
- Looking
for input from a non-medical provider of home care.
- Why
social media doesn't work in home care sales and marketing.
- Can
anyone please offer suggestions as to how to pay your employees
for on call?
- What are
you doing to optimize your web site presence?
We Have What You're Looking For!
Whether you are looking for help with marketing, selecting the best
caregivers, improving your process for phone inquiries or new revenue
sources, one of the e-books or e-tools listed below will be sure to
help you achieve your goals in 2011!
To order any of these outstanding products or learn more about them,
just click on the title.
Our most popular e-books:
Our most popular e-tools:
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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. 