Home Care Conferences

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Merrily Speaks on Marketing Home Care

Presenting on home care marketing strategy never gets old. Right around the corner, I’ll be keynoting at conferences around the country on customer service and web-based internet marketing, as well as teaming up for an an informative webinar with Will Chatham, Web Manager and a critical component of our corecubed team. Here’s a preview of the marketing goodness that’s to come.

Merrily Orsini Speaks!
Merrily Orsini Brings Humor and Experience and Relevance to an Audience

May 8, 2012

Texas Association for Home Care & Hospice Private Pay Conference: Think Big!

Keynoting with my presentation, “Bigger & Better Customer Service: Winning and keeping clients in today’s market,” you’ll learn my definition of ‘lagniappe’ and how we add that extra dollop to home care. Today’s home care market has competitive and economic challenges that require new tactics and tools to succeed.  Providing excellence in both the quality of the care provided and the way it is delivered necessitates a concierge mentality from initial contact through service provision.  How do you build it into the agency as core values?

Plus, I’ll be leading a Breakout Session—Inbound Marketing: The Skinny on Social Media. Technology is changing how people find and choose home care providers. From blogging to Facebook, to LinkedIn and Google+, attendees will learn how to integrate traditional agency marketing into today’s strategy.

Register here: http://www.tahch.org/TAHCH/Education_Central/Prof_Continuing_Education.aspx

October 16 – 18, 2012

New York State Association of Health Care Providers’ 2012 Annual Management Conference & Exhibition

Keynoting with my collective thoughts on “The Effective Website: Ever Shifting, Ever Changing,” conference attendees will look through a kaleidoscope, and change their perspective on website functionality and marketing. Technology in today’s world changes rapidly, and how the website is used changes as the viewer changes his scope, and as technology changes the view. How does an agency best use the Internet as a marketing tool? This informative session will address how to integrate all marketing efforts into the agency website, implementing a strategy for success.

Also leading the Breakout Session, “Convergence and Interactivity: Spend an Hour a Week for Results,” I’ll touch on how to maximize the time-limited work week, and how to keep online content fresh, keep the search engines happy, and how to engage potential and current referral sources and customers.

October 21 – 24, 2012

National Association for Home Care & Hospice Annual Meeting & Exposition

With my breakout seminar on, “Inbound Marketing: A Natural for Home Care with Mobile Apps, Website Resources, and Social Media,” I’ll be talking about all things mobile. More and more, the mobile phone and tablets are fast becoming the hub for much of home care sales and marketing. Growing a business is more about having the right information available in a variety of online ways, and interacting and responding appropriately. Attendees will leave ready to get social!

Register here: http://www.nahc.org/Meetings/AM/12/

April 25, 2012

National Private Duty Association (NPDA) Webinar: The Agency Website as the Core of Marketing Strategy

As more people search for resources online, the agency website has become the core for marketing services. Making the most of the agency website, not only in design, but in content, and having the search engines rank the site on the first page, are key goals for marketing. Learn the basics from Will Chatham and me, in this interactive webinar where live sites will be used as examples.

To register contact marla@privatedutyhomecare.org and while you are at it, mention to NPDA that they need to hire corecubed to redesign their website so they can market their webinars online!

For more information about booking me for your next event, check out my “Book Merrily” page and contact my team today!

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Private Duty Homecare Association Leadership Summit: Wednesday – Day 3

Birds-of-a-Feather Roundtables

Day three of the 2012 Private Duty Homecare Association Leadership Summit began with attendees learning from their peers at our Birds-of-a-Feather Roundtables. Facilitated by experts on various topics, attendees sat around tables to get input and to discuss ways to grow and improve what they are doing related to the topic. The questions were flying and watching agency owners share their best practices was a great collaborative exercise. Many continued their discussions post-session and planned to exchange contact information post-conference.

Topics at the roundtables included:

  • Alternative service offerings
  • Modeling private home care services based on a concierge model
  • Social media as a marketing tool
  • Google & Grandma: SEO tips
  • Health care reform
  • Grass roots lobbying efforts for home care issues
  • Ethics and the new age of private duty home care
  • Disaster preparedness
  • Long-term care insurance ins and outs
  • CRM and workflow processes
  • Wage and hour issues

Software Speed Dating

For those interested in learning about scheduling and management software, attendees joined the first-ever software speed dating session. Four different vendors presented for 15 minutes each. They highlighted what differentiated their software as well as highlighted the items that current customers find the most beneficial. Vendors that participated were eSolutions, Generations, Shoshana Technologies, Rosemark and Heath Trust Software.

Closing General Session

Private duty home care agencies are facing business-changing issues from current legislation. From health care reform and all that trickles down from those initiatives, Bill Dombi, Vice President of Law for NAHC, closed the conference with a thorough download from Washington DC Bill opened with the fact that our biggest concern should be how we are going to meet the great and growing demand for care. He added that, because it is an election year, he predicts we will not see the health care reform act repealed in 2012. However, it will be a central part of the 2012 campaigns for presidential election.

In 2012, several issues are on the forefront, including the fate of healthcare reform law at the US Supreme Court. Everyone is really looking toward the US Supreme Court to see what they are going to decide with these cases. What will be affected out of these decisions will be:

  • individual mandate which addresses the minimum coverage provision
  • Anti-Junction Act which deals with applicability

What might be considered the most impactful issue on the table for private duty is the Companionship Exemption. Bill went through many of the updates about where legislation stands as well as what we can expect in the near future. For a recap of these updates, please watch the Legislative Update videos at www.youtube.com/PDHCA.

NAHC has an action plan which includes conducting an economic impact study as well as a media campaign. Bill mentioned that agencies can go the NAHC website to send messages to Congress.

Post-Conference Intensive: Focus on Sales

Led by Barbara Akst, BA, MA, CEO of Training Unlimited of Virginia, this time served as an interactive work session. Attendees came prepared with their sales plans to focus on goals and objectives to establish action items to carry out upon returning to the office. A key take-away from the session for the attendees was to understand and determine the difference between knowing goals vs. objectives. Another great learning from the session was the acronym “SMART” Goals. SMART stands for specific, measureable, achievable, results focused, time bound. Barbara encouraged attendees to think about what is it that they want in a sales professional in terms of characteristics, what their role will be and what their performance expectations are.

Watch what happened at the Private Duty Homecare Association Leadership Summit on the PDHCA YouTube Channel! 

 

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Private Duty Homecare Association Leadership Summit: Day 2 – Tuesday

Private Duty Leadership Summit’s General Session Keynotes

When Dr. Lance Secretan was introduced and he walked up to the front of the room and continued right past the podium where most speakers would take their station, we knew we were in for something different. Walking the floor with the audience, he engaged from the very beginning. He led with, “We are going to talk about inspiration.”

He discussed leadership as an old concept with a missing piece, which is inspiration. How can you inspire others if you, yourself are not inspired? To dive into that concept, he talked about motivation and how we often as a society confuse motivation with inspiration. We have built companies, incentives, etc. on motivation, which is a fear-based concept. Dr. Secretan encourages us to throw this idea out and shift thinking toward inspiration. To be inspiring to others and to yourself, you must change the words you use. Inspiring words are those with compassion, care and love. “Love leads to inspiration.”

Dr. Secretan asked, “How do you run a healthcare business when the game around you changes all the time?” Take a good look at your leadership team. He stated that because we are human beings, all leadership teams are dysfunctional to some extent. The first thing we need to do is align and correct  these teams. To do so, ask three questions and have everyone in the leadership team share these responses with each other.

  1. Why am I here? This is your destiny.
  2. What is my calling? This is your calling.
  3. How will I be? This is your character.

This is called the “Why Be Do.”

Another major component of Dr. Secretan’s insight had to do with the concept of Permission Space. What will people allow you to do? What is accepted by your customer base? You will be given permission to be great if you do these things. As an agency, figure out what those things are, plot them on a map and follow it.

“Inspiration drives performance.”-Dr. Lance Secretan.

“Authenticity is the alignment of the mind, the mouth, the heart and the feet.” -Dr. Lance Secretan

Paul Kusserow, Humana

Paul opened with a powerful statement. He believes home care, despite the uncertain healthcare landscape, is an extraordinary business to be in—and will change the way we age.

He discussed how Humana took the principles of Dr. Secretan and changed the dynamic of the company. Fundamentally, Humana wanted to establish a continuum of care for their customers. They wanted to start the dialogue about wellbeing with customers before they were ill. They believed this was in their permission space.

To this end, Humana began to research their customer base to see what their customers’ impressions of wellbeing were.

Through this process, Humana realized that they wanted to be “all things senior.” They see a great deal of opportunity for home care companies in telehealth and helping families become a part of the care process. Agencies should think about how to expand their influence. He concluded with, “Humana wants to inspire people to be the best they can be and partner with them to do that.”

Make sure to see Val J. Halamandaris’ recap of his thoughts on the keynote speakers at http://youtu.be/NbsU5jzQNDU.

Education Sessions

PDHCA was honored to host a series of education sessions in the afternoon with dynamic content for attendees. For clips of the sessions, visit PDHCA’s YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/PDHCA.

Session topics included:

  • Get more web visibility, traffic and leads
  • New rules of home care growth in the post-recession age
  • Negotiating the sale of a home care agency
  • Legal issues concerning websites, blogs and social media
  • Attracting and retaining the A+ caregiver
  • Making sense out of private duty’s role in transitional care
  • Focused networking as an art form that drives sales
  • Obtaining insurance benefits for your clients’ care
  • Quality & customer service: two sides of the same coin

Continue to follow PDHCA Conference updates at #PDHCASummit on Twitter and watch important video of conference speakers on the PDHCA YouTube Channel! 

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Private Duty Leadership Summit: Day 1 – Monday

This year’s PDHCA Summit introduced a new program, the pre-conference intensive, which focused on Operational Tools and Results. Everyone came prepared to learn, and there was great information for start-ups all the way to multi-million dollar agencies. Ginny Kenyon, of Kenyon Consulting, started out the intensive with an impactful statement for all agencies offering private pay services, “One service line in private duty will not cut it.” She encouraged the audience to think outside the box on ways to include creative ways to engage new, potential business. Here are some examples given:

  • Mommy and baby programs
  • Day of sugary support
  • Cruise companions
  • Home modification
  • Holiday helpers

She pointed out that business is anything your customers are willing to pay for and that you can provide confidently. She also recommended that you heed caution when considering new services. In other words, give careful thought before launching. Make sure you follow state rules.

A big focus in the pre-conference intensive was the Operations Dashboard. Knowing where you are in terms of data will be the only way agencies can remain profitable and successful during growth. Agencies have to know what costs are: productivity of staff, cost of leads, cost of referrals, conversion ratios, average hours per new client, per active client, loss ratio, etc.—bottom line, you have to look at gross profit and net. A good operational dashboard will help you figure that out. According to Ginny, “Salespeople should be making 25 to 30 sales calls per week.” Additionally, she advises that agency owners should make sure salespeople know their “speak” when marketing to referral sources.

Next up was Patricia Drea, focusing on benchmarking. She recommended that small agencies (those with revenue under $500k) track key indicators such as:

  • Lead tracking
  • Lead conversion
  • Monthly profit & loss

For agencies with $1M and above, Patricia noted that a referral analysis should be added. It is also at this point that she recommends following up with customer service surveys to make sure the quality of service is still there and allowing for measurement of change.

Once an agency moves into the $3M and up revenue category, a comparative performance between people on staff should be added. Scorecards and process improvement are necessary for improving performance, and Patricia was quoted as saying, “Make sure to continue to use benchmarking after implementing process improvements so you don’t slide backwards.”

Some of the numbers that agencies should pay attention to when benchmarking are the average number of hours per care recipient. This value lets you know if you are recruiting fast enough. Also, pay attention to profit margin. Patricia stated, “Industry standards say that the average profit is 15 to 20%.”

A big takeaway for the groups was this simple, but powerful statement, “You won’t make up profit margin with volume.

Patricia also recommended that office staff salaries and benefits should be 12 to 16% of total gross revenue.

A great take-away from the entire pre-conference intensive for all agencies is, “Private duty agencies need to become data-driven organizations.”

Scott Spangler wrapped up the morning session with a quote about the positive effects of having a functional operational dashboard, “The dashboard is a great tool to catch greatness.”

Continue to follow PDHCA Conference updates at #PDHCASummit on Twitter and watch important video of conference speakers on the PDHCA YouTube Channel! 

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Private Duty Home Care Leadership Summit & Expo, Pre-Conference Intensive Workshop

For the first time ever, the 2012 Private Duty Home Care Leadership Summit & Expo will host a pre-conference intensive workshop for leaders in home care. Operations Toolbox: Nuts & Bolts of Building Systems & Sustaining Profitability will focus on how to run a profitable home care agency from experts who either are doing it or have done it. It’s a home care conference session not to be missed!

The pre-conference workshop will happen Monday, January 23, 2012, from 8:30-11:45 a.m.

Topics covered:

  • How to set up a private duty business correctly.
  • Chart of accounts.
  • How to read a P&L statement.
  • Cash flow and profitability.
  • What is the best way to classify home care for accounting?
  • Dashboard – division of types of services, by hours scheduled.
  • From tuck-ins to wake-ups to live-ins, and the costs related to each as a way of determining service mix.
  • Caregiver types, pay and responsibilities.
  • Referral sources by type.
  • Admissions by source – understanding where referrals come from that are turning into real clients.
  • How to get more of the clients with the higher revenue.
  • Service offerings that make the most money? Differing offerings and how to measure and manage each.
  • Caregiver turnover ratio and how to figure.
  • How to develop a profile for the ideal caregiver and orientation.
  • Screening and hiring processes and training.

Enjoy the chance for unbeatable professional development, and learn from educational sessions on effective operations, marketing and human relations at this year’s Private Duty Home Care Leadership Summit & Expo. For more details about the conference, please visit: http://www.nahc.org/Meetings/PD/12/program.pdf.

 

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