|
PDT
#136 -- Market Your Quality of Care
|
|
|
Make Quality
Matter! February
11, 2009
|
|
|
|
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.
|
|
|
|
|
|
I'm a user of home care services every day, and I know the
importance of quality, well-trained caregivers.
So why would I say "Quality doesn't matter"?
Let's step back to nearly 25 years ago. I was working as a
teenager for my Dad in his fledging consulting firm as his
bookkeeper. (He was so small; his 15 year old was balancing his
checkbook.)
One of his early clients was Oil City Hospital in our home town of Oil
City, Pennsylvania. They had hired him to facilitate a board of
directors retreat, and in preparation he conducted a patient
satisfaction survey.
What he found was that patients who viewed the hospital in a negative
light focused on the taste of food, noise in the hallways, comfort of
their bed, temperature and overall responsiveness of staff. They
weren't judging quality of care, they were judging hospitality.
When you enter the hospital, you're judging on a pass/fail
system. If the patient lives, their expectations have been
met. If the patient dies, their expectations are not met.
We know that exceptional customer experiences only happen when you can
exceed expectation. Because of this hospitals have become
extremely high tech, extremely expensive hotels. Many hospitals
today focus heavily on services and comfort.
Private duty home care is even more difficult. Your clients
typically don't get better. For many of your clients it's a
gradual slope into disability or infirmity. While you may see
quality of life improvements, ultimately very few "get
better".
With that said, client satisfaction surveys indicate that, generally
speaking, your clients are remarkably happy with your services.
They like their care givers, and the hospitality is top notch because
care takes place in their own residence.
This is a nightmare for marketing professionals. Every private
duty home care company claims to give top quality service and, by and
large, most of them do.
So how does your marketing team differentiate your company from the
rest? Simple, you make quality matter!
How You Make Quality of Care Important
Marketing a private duty home care company is all about
differentiating yourself from your competitors. (And remember, today
your biggest competition is still families who decide to put ads in the
local paper and hire privately.)
You make quality important by defining it more clearly.
If you watched the Super Bowl you saw some terrific commercials for
Hyundai, the traditionally low cost carmaker. They announced that
they had won the prestigious 2009 North American Car-of-the-Year
award. Most of us can't truly evaluate automotive quality.
If you are like me, when the key turns it starts (pass) or doesn't
(fail). Our best self-judged quality is the frequency with which
our car starts and, if it doesn't, the size of the repair bill. When
buying new cars we rely on objective third parties to help us judge
quality and value.
In private duty home care making decisions about quality before buying
is even more difficult. Families and referral sources can't judge
quality of care so they typically judge based on price, telephone
courtesy, or word of mouth.
If you don't want to compete on price, you'll find yourself relying far
too heavily on word of mouth marketing. If you aren't the largest
agency in town, you face an uphill battle if you want to grow and
increase market share.
Creating an objective measure of quality is difficult. Ultimately
quality care starts with quality caregivers. Creating the
perception of quality in the minds of your customers starts with
defining quality caregivers.
|
Caregiver Quality Assurance
Every company claims to have the best caregivers, but how
can you prove it objectively?
Dozens of companies started using our caregiver pre-employment
assessment system, and not only has it improved the overall quality and
continuity of care, but it's a definitive manager that can set you
apart from your competition.
For this reason, we developed The Caregiver Quality Assurance logo that
can be used in conjunction with our caregiver pre-employment assessment
system to demonstrate that your company uses the system to screen
applicants and to improve caregiver-client matching.
If you'd like to learn more about the Caregiver Quality Assurance
program and the requirements to become a participant, you can call
Diane West at 1-866-209-5101.
|
Stop by our Private Duty Today Blog to
take our brief, completely unscientific, poll about your biggest needs
for improving human resources. Check it out when you get a minute
and leave your comments or questions.
|
|
|
|
