Do You Promote Your Chronic Disease Program? Why Not? If You Can't Say It Brings You New Clients, Then It Is Time To Make A Change Today!
July 24, 2021
Take A Deep Dive Into Your Chronic Disease Management Program:
The first step in this process is determining how successful your agency is at managing chronic disease. How often do these patients discharge with all goals met? How much has rehospitalization of this population decreased since you started or updated your program? Have you integrated your care plans? Do your aides have advanced education and certification in chronic diseases? Are you tracking your progress/ successes? If you haven't done these things, then it is time to dig into it. Know your program from every point of operations to understand how it really works if you don't already know.
Market Your Chronic Disease Successes:
Now, you have done the background. The next step is development of your marketing program around disease process. Let's consider some different marketing venues and potential approaches to promote your chronic disease programs:
- Television: Pay attention to the next 10 tv ads you see for home health programs. How many of them say the same thing? Many have a typical clinician smiling with a patient while talking generically about different offerings from the business. Many times something is said like, "We offer a full range of home health services such as nursing, physical, occupational, and speech therapy along with home health aide services". What does this really tell the potential patient? How many specifically talk to successes in managing COPD or CHF? How about specialized diabetic services?
- Social Media: The same rings true here. Use your social media advertising wisely. Make sure your ads don't look like every other agency. Ask yourself if you knew nothing about home health, would you look seriously at your own agency based on your advertising?
- Other Health Care Providers: When you speak directly with physician's group, dig into your statistics. The information shouldn't be generic. Talk about the patients you share. Don't go back to the basics with the physicians. We have seen many physicians zone out of presentation my marketing staff because of the generic nature of what is said.
- Patient Testimonials: These are great when speaking to physicians, using print ads, and for television commercials.
- Community Education: How often do you market to the community in providing education? Consider supports groups in your community. Have you attempted to educate there? Some find local fair and festival booths effective while others do not. Have you tried this approach? What about local EMS? The squads get called on these patients all the time. How much would your local EMS know about how you can eliminate some of their frequent fliers?
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HOPE Question and Answer Repository
Today, this article will look at little different than out typical articles. We all know the costs of losing employees and trying to hire and train new ones. It is exhausting and expensive. So, we think about our wages and benefit packages all the time. What can we do differently that makes people stay? We can’t change the job and we don’t want to keep people that don’t like the work itself. So, how do we acknowledge employees in a way that is valuable to them and that our businesses can afford to do? 5 Things To Consider About Employee Recognition At Your Christmas Party: 1. Years of Service: These can be based on milestone work anniversaries (5, 10, 15 yrs, etc.). If a person has been at your agency 11 years, you pull them up and acknowledge them in the group of employees who have been there at least 10 years up until the time they hit the 15 years landmark. This way longevity is recognized yearly. 2. Special Employee awards: Now, this may be difficult if your staff is very small, but acknowledge the employee who has gone the extra mile in the job they do. Tell the story. The employee needs to know when the employer is proud of the work that has been done. Consider a plaque or certificate. Don’t minimize the value of the employee having them to display. 3. Acknowledge all employees in the mix: Because we are a clinical industry, the administrative staff is often overlooked on day-to-day operations. Ultimately, don’t miss the chance to acknowledge the employee who was able to catch billing errors or collect on a large account. Staff doesn’t like to hear about money, but those types of collections keep Christmas bonuses in place! So, make sure the other staff knows the accomplishments of the finance department or the office manager that every caller loves to speak to. Don't ever forget the IT staff that is on call more than any clinical person in your agency! 4. Letters from the administration: Add a personal note to your staff either collectively or individually depending on the size of your agency. If you are larger, there are employees you don’t often see or get to talk to on a regular basis, so take the time so send a note with that Christmas bonus. 5. Consider the Christmas bonus: Listen, some of you can afford to do substantial monetary bonuses and that is fantastic. However, if you are not in that position, consider something in its place. Maybe small gas cards go with the letter from administration. With the cost of groceries, consider something that helps with the costs of daily living for employees. Big box gift cards in your area will always be used. You may do a lot of these things on a yearly basis to employees. All this being said, it doesn’t mean there aren’t reasons for acknowledgement throughout the year. However, your annual Christmas party is a good way to do it collectively. Between your annual party, write the individual cards to employees when you hear a patient interaction worthy of praise. Or, maybe you buy a gas card for the employee who has picked up extra shifts and always shows up on time. Ultimately, employees will feel valued. You will not regret the time, effort, and energy put into these efforts. Merry Christmas! If you want help with recruitment and retention strategies for your agency, please call Kenyon Homecare Consulting at 206-721-5091 or contact us online today.