What Makes You Different Than The Rest Of Your Home Care and Hospice Competition? Stop And Decide What to Add Today To Secure Your Tomorrow!
October 23, 2021
Not Sure What Your Niche Is or Should Be?
- Pediatric Chemo Certification: Pediatric chemo often requires a chemo certified nurse to complete it unlike your typical 5-FU infusion that has been done at home for years. So, how many agencies in your area can provide this service? It is common for those hospitals servicing pediatric cancer patient not have a provider in rural areas. This leads to either the patient coming back into the hospital to receive treatment each time or an agency that is far away having to be paid a whole lot more to travel into rural territory to provide the service. This may be something completely untapped in your area and therefore allow you to negotiate rates that make it lucrative to provide the service even if there is more travel to do so.
- Specialty Infusion: There are still many agencies that shy away from providing infusions in the home. Maybe your agency will infuse an antibiotic, but won't do chemotherapy or IVIG. These are infusions that allow you to negotiate rates that allow you to turn a decent profit on every visit.
- Pediatrics: The majority of skilled programs out there don't specialize in pediatrics. If you have a pediatric nurse that comes on board, you could really market the specialty for your agency. Partnerships with pediatricians or children's hospitals are key for this. Unless the agency is specifically a pediatric agency, this is an often untouched specialty for the industry.
- Psych Nursing: Again, this is where partnerships with mental health professionals and hospitals could really make you thrive in your service area. A good qualified psych nurse can add so much quality to the care of your patients, especially considering how many mental health issues have come to light since the pandemic hit. Anxiety and depression are so often missing from our care plans when they are key to a patient successfully completing goals.
- Respiratory Therapy: Having a respiratory therapist to assist and consult regarding patient care is a huge thing to increase the level of confidence this physician specialty has in your agency. Just like with nurses who have a psych or pediatric specialty, the respiratory therapists communicate differently with physicians based upon the specialty. They know how to quickly and efficiently provide the MD the data needed for the physician to make the best medical decisions at home.
Now, You Have To Market Yourself Well:
The biggest issue agencies have with specialty programs is not marketing them well and developing partnerships with the right providers and payers to have the program flourish. It is a process and you have to have a good plan in place for it. Should you need with adding a service line or deciding on a niche market, call Kenyon Homecare Consulting
at 206-721-5091 or contact us online. Our senior consultant have decades of high level experience with expansion and adding service lines or niche programs.
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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.