We hear it all the time: “Now here’s what will happen. Medicare has 90-day certification and recertification periods and so we’ll be reviewing your dad in our team meeting and the physician will sign the certification as long as he meets criteria.” Huh?

Why do we feel we have to go through this with patients and families at admission? Stop describing our internal process and instead focus on any impact on them. If you think about it, it would be like you going for a surgical consult and the surgeon describes the way his assistant submits your case to your insurer. Who cares??

What you should say. If they ask, tell them that they can be on hospice care for as long as their physician and Medicare say it’s okay. Otherwise, there’s no need to go into this garbled explanation when families are already exhausted and on information overload!

Remember that the only truly “iffy” cases are those involving diagnoses where longer-term stabilization may occur. So for those cases, tell the family that, “Sometimes patients stabilize to the point that they don’t need hospice for a period of time.

“In a lot of ways, that’s the good news. But we can always come back to help if the doctor feels your dad can once again benefit from hospice care.” Enough said! 

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Celebrate and promote home healthcare all month long.

November is also the month to focus on three goals:

1) Close business from existing referral sources.  Review all accounts and plan at least one contact during the month that will ask for a referral.
2) Build relationships at the holidays.  This is the best time of year to build warm, fuzzy relationships—so make the most of the opportunity.
3) Plan for the coming year.  In two months it will be time to start the New Year and you must start planning now.

Monthly Reminders:

Make sure that all of your promotional plans for November and December holidays are in place and ready to go.  If you will be distributing calendars to your accounts—start now and beat the competition.

Holidays and Important Dates:

Veteran’s Day
Thanksgiving

Other Important (and some not so important) Observations:

National Diabetes Month
Diabetic Eye Disease Month
National AIDS Awareness Month
Child Safety and Protection Month
Family Violence Prevention Month
Home Care Month
National Hospice Month
Homeless Awareness Month
Lung Cancer Awareness Month
National Alzheimer’s disease Month
American Indian and Alaska Native Heritage Month
National Adoption Awareness Month
National Family Care Givers Month
Stamp Collecting Month
Aviation History Month
Peanut Butter Lovers Month
Epilepsy Awareness Month
Family Stories Month
I am so Thankful Month
International Orphan Disease Month
National Georgia Pecan Month
National Healthy Skin Month
National Life writing Month
National Marrow Awareness Month
Vegan Month
Diwali
Ramadan

Excerpted from 101 Home Care Promotional Strategies That Deliver Legendary Results without Busting Your Budget! by Michael Ferris

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What does “intake” mean to the average person? “Induction in the armed services” is a standard response! It’s a dated, institutional term, so get rid of it! (Even “admissions” connotes the wrong thing to most consumers because they think it means they’ll have to receive hospice care in a hospital.)

Call it what it is (or should be)! Instead of these industry terms that have no relevance or appeal to potential patients and families, why not call it your “Customer Service Center?” After all, it provides many of the services of one:

We hear it from “liaisons” all the time: “Well, I just stopped by to say hello and see if the family had any more questions. I was in the hospital anyway, so I thought I’d check with them. It really wasn’t a visit, so I didn’t write it down.”

It really was a visit: Every face-to-face contact with a patient or family is a visit, period. You need to increase admissions, and if the program rep or nurse is going back multiple times to get (or not get) the consent signed, then you need to know that. Multiple visits represent a performance problem that needs to be addressed.

And what was the outcome? So if your staff is making multiple visits, are they then documenting the outcome? If there’s no documentation, you can’t help them. And if they’re not reporting multiple visits because they know it’s a performance problem, what are they doing all day?

Make sure that every visit has a coded result and check the reason codes if nothing happened! 

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In their well-intended desire to tell callers about the wonderful hospice benefit, referral coordinators often automatically say that the nurse will visit 2 - 3 times a week and the aide usually is 3 - 5 times.

While in some cases this may be true, it’s inappropriate for us to say this to a caller when we haven’t even assessed the situation. It can also set a troublesome expectation that this is the standard. Then, at the visit, if the assessment nurse says that nursing visits will be once a week, the family may feel that they’re not getting the full benefit.

If callers ask: Tell them that the nurse will put together a team schedule based upon the needs of the patient and family. If they really push about nurse visit frequency, tell them that at a minimum it’s once every 2 weeks, and usually once a week.

Volunteers and aides: It’s also inappropriate to give away volunteers or aides over the phone. While they certainly are a key benefit, tell callers that “the nurse will talk to you about the support services that we have should your family need assistance with personal care or other help.”

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Question: You get a call from a daughter whose father is in the hospital. She inquires about your service and you schedule a visit. After you hang up, you fill in the referral form. Who do you list as the referral source?

Most hospices code the referral source as “family or friend” because a family member made the call. But how did they hear about you? The only case in which the family/friend is the referral source is:

It’s so easy for call center and admissions staff to fall into a “wehaveitis” mode when asked by callers or families what hospice care is.

Focus on their situation: When they ask about your program, don’t assume that that’s your cue to start your “spiel.” Instead, tell them you’ll be happy to give them information, but first ask what their situation is and why they called you today.

Tip: When you hear the term “spiel,” stop it right then! For all the “we hate anything that says sales” feedback from your team, the use of this term is as sleazy and offensive as it gets!

Use the nutshell statement: Here’s a simple statement that uses family-friendly, real world terms to describe what your program does:

Hospice is a patient and family support service that:

Your agency’s Web site should be consistent with your commitment to sales, marketing and customer service. A Web site will reinforce your agency’s image, provide a means of getting information, provide a favorable comparison to your competition and make it easy for your customers to communicate with you electronically.

Following are some tips for making your agency’s Web site stand out from the competition’s:

One the most important attributes of the successful home care sales person is the ability to qualify prospects and customers.  There should be in each agency a list of questions that you will want to know about every referral source.  This list should be compiled by the entire team at the agency as the attributes of the ideal referral source will hinge on these items.  The reason your most successful “A” accounts are your best accounts is because your agency best serves their needs.

You must uncover the referral sources needs and special interests by properly qualifying them.

Some questions to add to your list:

Family caregivers are potential clients who are often overlooked by home health care agencies.  These caregivers are already providing care to their own family members, and as a result are generally overlooked as prospects.  The reality is that it is only a matter of time before they will either need additional help or will be in need of respite.  What better way to build relationships with this community than to provide training for caregivers and caregiver support groups.

A recent study by the National Alliance for Caregiving in conjunction with the AARP asserts that while more than half of caregivers give assistance with ADLs, only 18% have received any formal training. 

There are many times more caregivers than private duty patients in the community at large.  They can all benefit from training on how to better care for their family members.  This will create tremendous amounts of goodwill with this group of future potential clients. 

Support groups are another excellent way to build strong relationships with this potentially important group of future clients. 

Respite services can be pathway to future business.  Offering respite care can be a great way to introduce you to family caregivers and opens the door to increased business.  Anything your agency can do to build a strong bridge to the caregiver community will position the company to increase its market share in the future.

Excerpted from 101 Home Care Promotional Strategies That Deliver Legendary Results without Busting Your Budget by Michael Ferris

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Goal for the Month:

One agency reported great success with a “beat the summer heat” theme in conjunction with case conferences held between June and August.  Prizes awarded to attendees included free movie and water park passes, frozen yogurt gift certificates, squirt guns and sand toys.

Fresh homemade lemonade can be served on the days that the field staff are in the office and during all meetings and conferences.  Other variations on the “beat the heat” theme include:  watermelon themed meetings complete with seed spitting contests during the lunch hour, make your own ice cream sundae day and root beer float day.

Monthly Reminders:

Time to start making plans for Halloween, Thanksgiving and other Fall celebrations.  Make your recipient lists and order sufficient quantities of giveaways and other necessary materials to support all of your key accounts.

Other Important (and some not so important) Observations:

Black Business Month
Cataract Awareness Month
Children’s Eye Health and Safety Month
May Your Reading Be a Haven Month
National Immunization Awareness Month
National Inventors’ Month
National Win with Civility Month
Admit You’re Happy Month

Excerpted from 101 Home Care Promotional Strategies That Deliver Legendary Results Without Busting Your Budget by Michael Ferris.

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“Ability is what you’re capable of doing.  Motivation determines what you do.  Attitude determines how well you do it.”

~ Lou Holtz - Former football coach, author, motivational speaker

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In today’s competitive home care marketplace, increasingly the decision to use one provider over another is based solely on the agency’s ability to deliver noticeably superior customer service.  The only way to consistently deliver superior service is by creating and maintaining a culture that is dedicated to customer service.

How to create that culture is one of the top questions I am asked.  And unfortunately there is no magic answer.  It takes a total commitment to creating the culture from the top to the bottom of the organization and time.  The good news is that to outshine your competition may not take perfection right away.  Also, as I like to point out, it costs no more to deliver great service than to deliver bad service.  In fact, it can be shown that it is more cost effective to provide great service.

Home care is populated with incredible people; home care people are wonderful and caring individuals.  Home care as an industry, however, does not get the credit it is due because of its longstanding poor customer service practices.  Historically, agencies have not been compelled to invest in customer service.  As a result, now they have to devise a program to make customer service a priority in their agency culture.  If you were asked to name three companies that you admire most for their customer service experience, which would you name?  A bank, a restaurant, an airline or a department store may come to mind, but probably not a home care agency.

A truly great example is Southwest Airlines.  They have a very unique culture, one that has survived despite tremendous growth.  Many parallels may be drawn between their business and a home care agency.  Both have a workforce that is spread out geographically and don’t have the opportunity to all come together at one time.  They both provide services that are dependant upon being on time and delivering on the expectations of their customers.  And both must deliver extraordinary service while tightly controlling costs.  One need only look at Southwest’s success to realize the value in creating a business model and a culture that are based on a foundation of customer service.  An interesting statistic that belies this point is that the market capitalization of Southwest Airlines now exceeds the combined market value of all of the major airlines in this country combined.

You agency’s leadership must be steadfast in their belief that their unique advantage lies with the ability to provide great service.  You must encourage your staff to find ways to add those little unexpected personal touches to what you do.  Those small efforts will ultimately be repaid with enormous returns of goodwill in your community.  This behavior is cultural and must be encouraged and empowered.  After a time, these types of random acts of service will just happen naturally.  Until that time the Customer Service Champion in your organization will need to watch for acts to recognize; dig for opportunities; help staff realize them; and of course, be on the lookout for overkill or acts that don’t make sense (financially or otherwise) or are not consistent with the agency’s values.

To your customers, the true mark of your agency’s commitment to service excellence will not be what is seen in your marketing brochure, but rather the way that your agency responds when something goes wrong. 

By partnering closely with the other medical professionals involved with your patients’ care, you will make them look better as a result of your customer service focus.  Since there is no blame in a true and strong service culture, it allows the physicians and others to be viewed as allies and not adversaries.  This brings additional value to your relationship with these important health care professionals.  And, it ultimately will increase their loyalty, and the number of referrals and recommendations that you receive from them.

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What your agency does when there is a problem will determine your long-term success.  You must empower your staff to rejoice whenever there is a problem!  Every problem is a golden opportunity to build a stronger relationship with your customers.  Studies have shown that customers whose complaints are handled satisfactorily and in an expeditious manner are more likely to purchase additional services than those who experienced no problems with your services.  Since most of your competition probably runs from problems, this ability becomes a tremendous strategic advantage.

The opportunity is to build strong relationships with your referral sources by being visible and proactive when there are problems.  This single strategy will grow your stream of referrals better than any other strategy you may implement.  By maintaining high values and resolving problems that arise, you are building a very strong foundation for being a preferred provider for many years to come.

Service recovery or conflict resolution is all about keeping your customers satisfied and loyal users of your services despite problems that have surfaced.  This means that even if there is a service disaster, your customer still views your agency as the best to provide the services required.  It is the special effort that your customers will come to expect from your agency when something has gone a little or a lot wrong for them.  Service recovery is all about restoring trust when your customer is most likely to doubt your agency’s abilities.

The other thing that conflict resolution provides as a benefit is the opportunity to “train” your patients and clients as well as your staff.  Every interaction surrounding a service problem will be valuable to the training process.  This means that you will want to document many of these service recoveries to use with future staff training.  It will also underscore the importance of clear communication.

The economics of service recovery are easy to quantify, if you do nothing you lose customers and undermine your entire program.  If you are able to satisfy your customer’s problems you will actually end up with more loyalty than if there were no problems.  And while we would not suggest you create problems just to solidify your relationships with your customers, you must see problems as great service opportunities.  Your staff will really shine once they are great at problem resolution. 

Nothing is gained by winning an argument and losing a customer.

Since we know that customers won’t always seek us out to report service problems, we must be adept at probing for information and detecting problems.  In your satisfaction surveys or customer service profiling, always be on the lookout for suggestions for improvement and complaints.  Respond and let your survey respondents know that you appreciate their input and will use their response to aid with service improvement and report back to them.  Invite them to establish an ongoing dialogue with your agency to keep them providing additional ideas and suggestions.

Remember the golden rule:  to treat others, as you would like to be treated.  Think of how you would like to have the problem resolved if the tables were turned.  Don’t spend your time thinking about how it should be resolved to best suit your agency.  In other words, always put yourself in the customer’s shoes when analyzing how to best fix a service breakdown.

When a customer lodges a complaint, it can either be resolved or not, and if resolved, it can be resolved quickly or not.  Quick resolution is the ideal situation, but not all situations can be resolved quickly.  All situations must be analyzed quickly and communication regarding the problem and potential resolutions shared with the customer.  Ignoring a problem is the worst thing that can happen.  Any amount of time that elapses between your being made aware of the complaint and your taking action is going to be perceived by the customer as you ignoring them.

Remember that any problem that was significant enough to warrant complaining by your customer cannot be ignored or put on a list of low priority items.  If your customer felt strongly enough to bring it to your agency’s attention, then you must treat it with equal priority.  On the first contact, you must tell them what to expect. 

Your competitors may try to copy many things that you do, but they’ll never be able to replicate your legendary service culture.

The bottom line is this:  Resolution of customer complaints, concerns or problems and the return of that customer to a state of satisfaction with your agency have a profound effect on your agency.  It has an enormous financial reward for the agency.  It enables continued growth and saves on marketing expenses.  It is critical to the long-term success of your customer relationship program.  And, it will create stronger teams within your agency with greater pride and loyalty.  Problems provide ongoing diagnostics of your service program.  And, you will be building a strong bond between the agency and your staff as well as your agency and its customers. 

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Take a walk in your customer’s shoes.  What do they like?  What are their needs?  How do they view your agency and the services it provides?  These are things that you must know in order to accurately target your message to your intended market.  This is accomplished through several activities designed to keep in touch with your customer.

Research! Research! Research!  How many potential patients does your referral source serve?  What is the typical referral (e.g., illnesses, companionship needed, Alzheimer’s or dementia, chronic vs. acute)?  Which other agencies do they send referrals to and why?  What do we do great?  What needs work?

Have a system in place to trap the compliments as they are received and include them in your overall evaluation.  Look not only at who is complimenting the agency but also why.  What is important to this person and what made a big enough impact to motivate them to take the time to let your agency know what a great job it did?  These are important elements to consider as you are updating your customer profile.

Whatever you do, do research regularly and consistently and use the data to improve your marketing and customer service initiatives.  The best time to ask someone for a referral is when they are pleased with your services.  Ask for referrals in the course of your research.  Include a return form with your satisfaction surveys that asks for three referrals.  Make sure your investment in satisfaction surveying and quality improvement has a positive impact on your image, relationships with customers and marketing program.

Excerpted from 101 Home Care Promotional Strategies That Deliver Legendary Results Without Busting Your Budget by Michael Ferris.

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