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Private Duty Today
Welcome to Private Duty Today,
the bi-weekly electronic newsletter for Private Duty Home Care Leaders
from Leading Home Care ...a Tweed Jeffries company.
I'm Jason Tweed, Director of Business Development for
Leading Home Care, and Editor of Private
Duty Today.
Private Duty Today is published every
other Wednesday, and currently goes to over 7000 subscribers.
Private Duty Today is
a permission-based newsletter.
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Every time I write an article about caregiver quality as
competitive advantage I get lots of feedback, but not all of it
praise. There are two schools of thought.
- Caregiver
quality is a distinct competitive advantage, which leads to
greater profitability and growth.
- Caregivers
are inventory, therefore acquiring as many as possible as
inexpensively as possible leads to greater profitability and
growth.
Unfortunately
both of these schools of thought hold true. I've seen successful
CEOs apply either.
I'll
admit, I'm biased. I have a great desire, and I believe a
personal responsibility, to improve this industry as a whole.
Improving the product of the industry is crucial in my mind.
Therefore,
once again, I'm going to disregard the "any warm body"
approach to caregiver recruitment. For those of you who are using
it successfully I encourage you to read this article with an open mind.
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The Three Phases of Strategic
Caregiver Staffing
Creating a high-quality field staff in the non-medical
home care industry can be broken up into three distinct actions;
recruitment, selection and retention. Over the next three issues
we will focus on each of these in some depth.
Recruitment, selection, and retention all deserve equal billing when it
comes to creating a group of caregivers that will differentiate your
organization in the marketplace.
Generally speaking the three actions can be defined as:
Recruitment -- Getting them in the
door
Selection
-- Choosing the best, eliminating the rest
Retention
-- Keeping the best... forever!
It isn't a complicated process but each action depends on the
others. If you're very good at selection and retention, but you
can't get enough people or you're attracting the wrong kind of workers
the whole process fails.
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Recruiting Quality over
Quantity
I wrote an article that received rave reviews several
months back. Marketing for Caregivers was
about writing better recruitment ads. It taught you how to focus
on the qualities you want in a caregiver, then how to write ads that
attract caregivers with these qualities. If you haven't had the
opportunity to read it, check it out in our archives.
A second article got less positive feedback because it
meant writing bigger checks. However, the feedback I got from the
companies who actually implemented the process blew me away. Most
of you have employee referral programs and many of them aren't very
effective. The article contains 10 Tips for an Employee Referral
Program That Works.
Finally, a third technique is simply to clone your best
caregivers. Unfortunately most of you don't have biology research
labs and some of you are uncomfortable playing God. Because of
this we'll use the low tech method of cloning.
First, identify the top 10 or top 10% of your caregivers,
whichever is larger.
Second, conduct interviews with these caregivers.
Here are some sample questions, but expand on them.
- What motivated you to work here?
- What motivates you to stay?
- What are some of the perks of working here?
- What are some of the pitfalls of working here?
- What would you change about our organization if you
could?
- Are you married? Children? Pets?
- Tell us about your all time favorite client.
- Tell us about your all time least favorite client.
- What do you do in your spare time? What
community activities do you enjoy?
- Do you attend worship services regularly? If so,
where?
- What newspapers do you read? Which radio
station is your favorite? Etc.
From these interview answers, create a profile of your
best caregivers.
You may be saying to yourself, "Are these questions
legal?" Many of them are in gray areas when using them to
determine hiring, but in this case you aren't basing hires on
them. You're going to use the answers to influence where and when
you recruit, and the language of your advertising. You aren't
going to use the information to hire or eliminate a specific caregiver.
Remember this is the recruitment phase, not selection.
Once you have this profile, look for other advertising
opportunities. Talk with your caregivers about ideal candidates
and ask them to recruit friends and family. If you realize that
most of your best caregivers attend worship services, perhaps you could
recruit in local churches. If many of your best caregivers are
active participants in the Latino community groups, reach out to these
groups. If nine out of 10 read the local Penny Saver every week,
consider advertising here.
Chances are you're going to identify one or more
recruitment techniques that your competitors are using and you'll be
able to reach out to an audience of highly qualified candidates.
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In the September 24 issue the topic will be
Selection. The primary focus is going to be using Leading Home
Care's online caregiver pre-employment assessment system.
If
you'd like to get a leg up, give Diane West, our assessment
coordinator, a call and ask her for a free demo of the system.
You can reach her in our Louisville office, 1-866-209-5101.
As
a CEO poor caregiver selection creates more sleepless nights than any
other issue. One bad hire can snowball into a huge number of
problems. The selection system is designed with one goal in mind,
more sleep for the CEO.
If
you'd like to rest easier, I encourage you to check out the demo then
read our step-by-step article in two weeks.
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Direct Mail Marketing with
Home Care Cards
 Greeting cards are a terrific way to build relationships
with referral sources, customers and their families, and even your own
employees. Unfortunately sending a personalized greeting card is
time-consuming, and sending them as part of a major marketing endeavor
would be expensive.
That's
about to change.
I'm
proud to announce our newest product, HomeCareCards.com.
- Imagine
choosing, writing, addressing, sealing and mailing a greeting card
with the speed of sending a single e-mail. If it were that
easy you would probably do it far more often.
- Imagine
sending a thank you gift to a referral source with the same ease.
- Imagine
sending hundreds of greeting cards to physicians offices or other
referral sources with a single click.
We've created an affiliation with SendOutCards and
customized the system to meet the needs of certified home health care
agencies and private duty home care companies.
For a ten minute one-on-one walk through of the system
call Jason Tweed at 1-888-668-9333.
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Private Duty Home Care
Accreditation
 By Deric Rutledge, ACHC
Accreditation is an important option that every private
duty organization should consider for two important reasons. First,
accreditation can be the catalyst for overall organizational
improvement and second, accreditation can be used as a powerful marketing
tool to differentiate one provider from another.
Accreditation is
regarded as one of the key benchmarks for measuring the quality of an
organization, along with its products and services. In the U.S.,
standard setting by industry leaders with a peer review is widely
accepted as a credible validation of quality processes and product or
service delivery.
Accreditation is a voluntary activity where healthcare
organizations submit to a peer review of their internal policies,
processes and patient care delivery against national standards.
Preparing for accreditation will disclose an organization's strengths
and weaknesses. This stage of the process provides information for
management to make decisions regarding operations in order to improve
the effectiveness and efficiency of business performance.
Successful accreditation can reap many benefits for an organization
such as a better overall business plan, improved policies, more
effective operations, stronger risk management strategies and a reduction
in incidents to name a few.
In the fast growing private care industry the quality of
care can differ significantly from one organization to another.
It can be difficult to validate your company's commitment to quality
care and customer service to potential consumers and referral
sources. Successful accreditation demonstrates to consumers and
referral sources that an organization has "gone the extra
mile" to ensure quality care. Consumers can be assured that
an accredited provider maintains higher standards of care than the
minimum required by state or federal regulatory agencies. ACHC
Standards demonstrate that companies who are accredited are committed
to the principles of quality and continuous improvement of
services. Any private care provider can tell a potential customer
that they are committed to quality care and service, however, an
accredited organization can prove that they are providing the highest
level of quality service and care.
ACHC (The Accreditation Commission for Health Care) is a
private, not-for-profit corporation that is certified to ISO 9001:2000
standards and was developed by home care and community based providers
to help companies improve business operations and quality of patient
care. In 2007 ACHC released the new Scope of Service Standards
for Private Duty Nursing (PDN) and Private Duty Aide (PDA). The
development of these new standards included review and recommendations
from a variety of providers, some of which are members of the National
Private Duty Association (NPDA) and the Private Duty Home Care
Association (PDHCA). These standards were developed so that a
provider of private care in the home could demonstrate and validate
their commitment to quality based upon relevant and realistic national
industry standards.
Learn more about the Accreditation Commission for
Health Care.
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