Kenyon Connects

So, you have a sudden vacancy or a planned one in your agency. Maybe this is new territory when it comes to replacing administrative positions. If so, then you need to understand the role of an interim manager and why not considering one may be a costly move. Let’s look at roles, benefits, and core competencies of an interim manager.

Over the years we have provided numerous home care interim managers for home care executive level positions. On a few occasions we have been told that the cost of using one of our senior home care executives is more than they can afford. This has always intrigued me, because when we do a cost of service comparison, we frequently find that by the time we add in all the benefits and overhead burden, the interim home care executive costs about the same and in a couple of situations less. 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. We find that if the employee burden of an organization is 20% or more, the cost of using one of our interim managers is about the same or depending on the salary of the previous executive, a little less. So 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. But cost is only one area that a home care organization needs to think about in using an interim home care executive. The benefits sometimes prove to be so beneficial that in retrospect we have been told that the vacated executive position gave the organization an opportunity to really look at themselves, their weakness and strengths, and develop a meaningful and effective strategic plan to carry the agency forward.

Nothing is more unsettling to a home care organization than the loss, or impending loss of an essential leader. Home care agencies that fail to plan for this event experience major disruptions in their business; initiatives lose momentum or are completely lost, uncertainty increases, staff resignations, and business drops off causing a decline to the bottom line. To avoid this problem, a home health or hospice organization must have both an emergency succession plan as well as an established succession plan.

Kenyon Homecare Consulting