Yesterday, I was speaking in Irvine, California to the regional meeting of one of America’s largest home health care companies. During my presentation, “Home Health 2020, the Six Pillars of the Home Health Agency of the Future,” I talked about the Growth Pillar. To explain why a home health agency needs to grow, I tell a story about my rose garden. Rose business go through a natural annual cycle of growth, dormancy, growth, dormancy. Every year or so, one of my rose business doesn’t come out of the dormancy cycle, and it dies.
The same thing is true of home health agencies. A healthy agency will go through periods of growth, dormancy, and sometimes even getting smaller. But it must return to a growth cycle, or it will die. That’s true of all organisms. We are either growing or dying.
After my program, One of the RNs who is a Director of Client Services for one of the branches came up to me. She said, “Thanks so much for helping me understand why we must grow. I never understood that before. I always thought it was OK for us to just stay the same size and take care of as many patients as we could. Now I see in more clearly.”
This was a wonderful affirmation of the message, and an affirmation that we learn from stories.
What stories are you telling to you staff to help them learn? Are you creating opportunities for your home health team to come together to share and to learn?
If you are considering bringing in an outside speaker to your next leadership retreat or regional meeting, I’d love to talk with you about some of the programs we have available for home health agencies.
What do you think about growth? How are you convincing your nurses and therapists of the importance of growing your agency?
Give us your comments below.
