Dear Friend,

My favorite season is fall. I love the crisp cold mornings, warm afternoons, deep blue skies, red and gold leaves, college basketball season and Thanksgiving! What a wonderful holiday! We have the opportunity each year to give thanks for all that we have, celebrate our national heritage and spend quality time with family and friends. It is also a great time to reflect on what a huge difference home health and hospice makes in our communities. The difference that our staff and caregivers make in the homes of our patients and their families is enormous. In talking with many of you, I know that you are also doing many volunteer activities to help those less fortunate or in need during the holidays. Thank you!

What are you doing to make sure that you have strong referrals coming in for the rest of the year?

You have two choices; you can accept as fate that your business will drop due to the holidays or you can set out to make this the best holiday season ever for referrals and future growth. Start by looking at the historical data. What have your admissions done historically over the last several holiday seasons? Obtain your data by week for the months of November and December by referral partner. Analyze the historical patterns and then research the why behind the trends. Make no assumptions!
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The End of Admissions
"Registration" Rules!
by Polly Rehnwall

What does "admission" mean to the average person? In the context of healthcare, it means going into a hospital. The vast majority of consumers think that hospice is a place (a facility or hospital) and are surprised when they learn that it's primarily delivered in the home. Why perpetuate the myth? If you want to increase awareness about hospice home care, stop calling it an admission!

Call it "registration" instead: When a patient or family signs consents for hospice care, they're really registering for your program. Even if they'll be transferred to a nursing home or treated as an inpatient in the hospital, they're still registering for your service.
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What is your agency doing to make sure that you have strong referrals coming in for the rest of the year?

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Growth Strategy: Expand the Use of Our Services

As you all know by now, one of my number one strategies is to ALWAYS be looking for ways to increase the use of our services by our referral partners. This is one of the best ways to grow your business, strengthen relationships, get more referrals from your 'A' accounts and to convert 'B' accounts to 'A' accounts. And at the end of the day, more patients and families get the gift of hospice or home care. Win, win, win, win, win…..

Examine what benefits you bring to your referral partners during the holiday season. What is the extra value add for the holidays? This could include less unnecessary ER visits, calls to on-call doctor, office hours returning and fielding patient calls, etc. Could be the peace of mind that comes from patients with less anxiety and problems during the season, etc.
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In each Legendary Sales Leadership Letter we answer your questions. Send them to us or call (800) 653-4043 and we'll make sure that yours are answered in a future issue.

Here is this week's question answered:

Question:
How do we handle the objection, "We already refer to several agencies we're very happy with and they are meeting all our needs"?

Answer:
Using the feel, felt, found method, you would answer:

I appreciate that you are happy with your current agencies. Most of my best accounts told me the same thing the first time I called upon them, but what they found was that we had the only ___ program in the area. Tell me what is most important to you when matching a specific patient with a particular agency. Click here to read more...