Kenyon Connects

You have just experienced the loss of the top leader of your home care agency. There in no one in the organization with the skill set or leadership to temporarily take on the role. What to do? Some agencies turn to consulting firms that offer interim home care managers. However, not all interim home care managers are equal. To assure you are getting the right fit for your organization, there are several factors to consider in your selection of the interim manager.

First, what is the reputation of the consulting firm or interim home care consultant? If you’re working with a consulting firm, you will want to know how they vet their interim managers. What are their requirements for the position? And, how does the home health consulting firm assure the associates have the requisite home health and hospice background, experience, and competency? A quality consulting agency should be able to address all of these concerns with an accurate description of the process and how they determine which interim associates best fit your needs. If you are thinking of using an individual who does interim home care management, you will want to do the vet them like you would a permanent replacement.

Secondly, how much actual experience does the potential candidate have in a leadership position for either home health or hospice? How current is that experience? If your agency is both home health and hospice, do they have experience in both? Do you have multiple offices? If so, has the potential interim home care manager managed multiple offices? What do their references look like and, will the home care consulting firm share that information with you? A good home care consulting firm will have already checked their references and be able to provide those to you if you wish. Most firms we are familiar with do a good job of vetting their consulting associates and this may not be a necessary step for you to take.

Thirdly, you will want to interview the candidate(s) for a fit with your needs and your agency staff. A home care consulting firm will usually have a couple of potential candidates for you to interview. Interview the interim candidates as you would the permanent replacement. Sometimes the interim home health or hospice manager will, in fact, turn out to be your replacement, so it is important that you approach the interviews in the same manner as you will for the permanent replacement. You may want the middle managers and selected field staff of your home care agency to also be involved in the interviews to assure this is someone they can respect and follow.

Finally, even the best interim home care manager will have difficulties initially if you do not have a clear plan for them to follow. Place any major initiatives on the list of objectives for them to achieve. If you are engaging a consulting firm, allow them to do a full organizational assessment that will provide identified issues and areas that the interim home care manager must address and resolve, as well as, the identified initiatives that the agency is working on. We all know that the objective of the home care agency is to find a replacement as quickly as possible. We also find that most home care agencies can take anywhere from 6 to 10 months to find that permanent replacement. In the end, no matter how desperate you are to fill the position, be sure to select the interim home care manager carefully.

View the time you have the interim manager as an opportunity to clean up the agency and set a course for the future with an expert at the helm. Rather than viewing the interim as “just a fill in”, an expert from the outside can take a new look at your agency, upgrade your agency and systems, and prepare you for your next adventure.

Inbound marketing continues to grow in importance for home care, and while it hasn’t made the more traditional outbound marketing techniques irrelevant, it is the way that more and more customers are finding the home care products and services they need. In fact, of all the daily online searches, nearly half (46%) are searches for information on products or services. This means clients are now looking for you, and not the other way around. Is your home care agency easy to find?

In this new marketing landscape, home care agencies should be shifting considerable focus from pushing their services out to prospective clients to pulling customers into their sites with inbound marketing techniques. According to Google, 70% of the links that search users click are organic, or not paid. This means that shelling out money for pay-per-click ads probably won’t get your home care agency the return on investment you were hoping for. So it’s time to start focusing on relevant, search engine optimized content, social media, and blogging, all of which can help bring potential clients to your virtual doorstep.

Use Your Website & Your Knowledge & Get Found

A good way to show potential clients that your home care agency is a home care authority is to provide them with relevant, timely resources that help them solve a problem, make a decision, or simply inform them. Staying current with ever-changing industry information shows potential clients that you are an authority within your industry and understand clients’ needs.

Including industry-related resources to your site is also great for search engine optimization, or SEO. While a home care agency’s website should be a hub of relevant information and communication, it should also be easy to find when potential clients are searching for the services you provide in your area. Search engine optimization is a key aspect of online marketing as inbound marketing continues to replace outbound marketing efforts (advertising, PR, email campaigns, etc) as the number one way in which consumers find the products and services they need. Industry-specific keywords help companies get found and get customers.

In addition, incorporating a blog and staying current with social media can improve SEO and give a home care agency another forum in which to be found online. Blogging provides a virtual soapbox where agencies can voice their industry expertise and inform their customer-base with up-to-date information. Using keywords within your blog and posts on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn will further your SEO efforts and help you be found on the great world wide web.

A Match Made in Marketing Heaven

With all the buzz and focus going to inbound marketing these days, it’s important not to neglect your tried and true outbound marketing. In fact, the two work together quite well. Ensure that your messaging across both inbound and outbound materials is uniform and targeted to the right audience, and include links to your website, blog, and social media sites on all print materials and email campaigns. Post news releases and print articles to your blog, and don’t forget to share them on Facebook! For a successful, well-balanced plan, use all your marketing strengths to create the total package.

Merrily Orsini is the founder and manager of CoreCubed, a full service integrated marketing communications agency with a focus on using the internet as a component of a strategic branded approach. Specialty is senior and elder care businesses, the private pay industry in home care, home health, Hospice, hospitals, geriatric care management, assisted living and retirement communities. Experienced and successful in marketing to and reaching those seeking niche products and services targeted to a mature affluent audience. She if the creator of MOSTSM, the first industry turnkey monthly marketing communications program designed specifically to increase billable hours and referrals for private duty home care, home health and Hospice.

Over the years, we have provided numerous interim home care managers for home care executive level positions. On a few occasions we have been told that the cost of using a senior home care executive is more than they can afford. This has always intrigued me, because when a cost of service comparison is conducted, we frequently find that by the time all the benefits and overhead burden are calculated, the interim home care executive costs about the same and in a couple of situations less than what their actual cost of a permanent replacement.

What we have found is that some home care organizations only look at the monthly salary of the previous executive and measure against that number alone. If the employee burden of an organization is 20% or more, the cost of using an interim home care manager is about the same, or depending on the salary of the previous executive, a little less. There always needs to be a comparison of apples to apples when calculating the cost of an interim home care manager for a senior level position.

Cost, however, is only one area that a home care organization needs to think about in using an interim home care manager. The benefits prove to be so beneficial that, in retrospect, a vacated executive position gives an organization the opportunity to really look at themselves, their weakness and strengths, and develop a meaningful and effective strategic plan to carry the agency forward.

When you fill an interim home care manager position, it requires that an organizational assessment be accomplished in order to make sure that the interim management services are meeting the needs of the home care agency. An initial organization assessment also ensures that the interim home care executive has focused on the issues and goals that need attention.

It’s not uncommon for an organizational assessment to uncover issues and problems that were not apparent to the higher level managers of the home care agency. Sometimes we find that the staff filling certain positions are either not competent for the position or their personality and style are disruptive to the team. This makes it difficult to build a cohesive and effective management or staff team. In other situations, we have found that the home care organization has a very dedicated and competent staff, but the systems of the organization have not kept pace with changes in the environment and the implementation of required processes or software.

In these cases, time-consuming “work arounds” have been developed by the staff to accomplish what they know needs to be done. These situations are costly to a home care agency and frequently remain unidentified because the work is getting done.

An objective outside consulting firm, with interim mangers conducting the organizational assessment, provides you the invaluable benefit of identifying these types of issues, along with recommended solutions . You will then have some direction on how these can be resolved to the benefit of the agency.

Finally, the benefit of using an interim home care manager is that your agency does not lose momentum on previous projects and initiatives. It allows your agency to continue to function effectively and maintain your progress toward organizational goals and objectives. It also gives stability to the organization in a time of stress and flux. Using a seasoned interim home care executive assists the staff to move forward with confidence and know that they will be okay.

The biggest mistake that an organization makes is to allow a key position such as the Director, Administrator, or CEO to go unfilled for 4 to 6 months. Referrals drop, collections fall off and this distresses the business. Without a leader at the helm, critical things fall by the wayside. There is no one at the top with the view of the “world” of the agency. An agency without a leader is an agency afloat on the sea with no one at the rudder.

If you are in a position with an executive level position open and need help during this time of change, call or e-mail Ginny Kenyon at 206-721-5091 or gkenyon@kenyonhcc.com. We are here to help.

Home Health agencies that have been in business for a few years can relate to the issue of growing pains. It is almost like you hit a ceiling and cannot grow beyond the increased competition, changes in payor rules and reimbursement amounts, increased regulations and shortages of skilled staff.

So what is happening?

As with all issues, there is never just one cause, but numerous ones that contribute to this problem. It could be that there is more competition, funding sources have changed, a shortage of caregiving staff, a business model that is no longer viable or a mismatch of needed skills with current staff. Any or all of these could be contributing to a decline or a flat line of business growth.

In business as in life, we need to constantly re-evaluate our position and make plans and appropriate adjustments. However, what we see in many home health agencies is that home care organization has never changed or modified their plans, their services or their internal staff. They have continued without any major modifications and are now at a standstill or are declining. What worked when the business was started years ago may no longer be a fit for the environment, the pay sources, the new knowledge in both clinical services and organizational function or skills needed for the new world that is emerging. This is particularly true at this time in our country where health care is undergoing major changes.

The agencies that survive will be those that can re-create themselves to match the changes that are coming. To do this, the agency must first assess their environment.

• What are the challenges and opportunities?
• Where does the agency fit in all of these changes?
• What must the agency do to prepare for the future?

To accomplish a comprehensive analysis, the agency must look inside, as well as outside, to really have a vision for the future. What we have found is that most agencies are fairly good at doing external analysis and making decisions on changes in regards to the service delivery and the financial issues associated with those changes. The area where we find agencies struggling is with the internal operations and staffing. Very frequently, we find that even though the environment has changed and field services have been modified to meet the changing needs, internal structures and most of all the internal home care staff has remained the same.

This is one of the hardest processes for a home care owner or administrator to go through. Many times we see that an employee is kept because of loyalty by them, even though they are not able to perform the needed functions of the new and emerging roles. As painful as this is, an employee analysis must be done if the organization is to survive and thrive in the future.

It all begins with an objective analysis. First, doing an internal function and skills needs assessment requires that the management focus strictly on the functions and skills needed to accomplish those functions. Secondly, evaluate the skill set of the staff in the internal operations to determine the fit or non-fit of the existing home care internal staff. In order to objectively accomplish this task, it requires that the manager eliminate names with positions and only focus on the function of the role. Finally, an objective list of skills that will be needed to achieve success in the role will need to be developed. Only after this is done can an objective review of current staff skillset be done.

If education and training can achieve the needed skills for the re-designed job, then the existing staff may be able to remain in their revised roles. However, it must be clear that failure to achieve results in the re-designed job will mean that the individual will no longer be employed with the organization. This is as important for the managers to understand as it is for the employee.

If you find that making these critical decisions on re-design of internal operations and subsequent job re-alignment and change is a problem, and feel you could use some help or coaching, call Ginny Kenyon at Kenyon HomeCare Consulting, 206-721-5091 or e-mail to gkenyon@kenyonhcc.com. We are here to help