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Home Care Marketing & Sales Mastery by Approved Senior Network®
Dawn Fiala, Lisa Marsolais, Annette Ziegler, and Valerie VanBooven RN BSN provide insight into home care marketing strategies. They cover in-person, in-field sales and online marketing every other week. These podcast episodes are part of the Home Care Marketing Mastermind, sponsored by Approved Senior Network®. Find more information at https://ASNHomeCareMarketing.com
Home Care Marketing & Sales Mastery by Approved Senior Network®
Effective Marketing and Operations in Home Care, Looking forward to 2025
Join us in our final Mastery Circle of 2024 where we share holiday greetings and prep for Christmas. Valerie VanBooven from Approved Senior Network kicks off with housekeeping notes, emphasizing the importance of muting lines to reduce background noise and encourages sharing stories and tips. We also discuss the significant topics of caregiver quality, operations, and experiences from Dawn Fiala and Annette Ziegler. Learn about operational efficiencies and effective documentation to enhance compliance and service quality. Discover creative leave-behind ideas for January and February to engage caregivers and referral sources. Finally, don't miss the announcement—the upcoming Mastery Circle meetings will now be held on Wednesdays starting January 15th!
00:00 Introduction and Holiday Greetings
00:38 Housekeeping and Participation Guidelines
01:43 Team Introductions
03:53 Accessing Past Meetings and Resources
06:52 Important Announcement: Schedule Change
08:24 Reviewing Yearly Performance Metrics
10:09 Compliance and Quality Improvement
24:37 Operational Efficiency Tips
26:49 Handling Quick Starts and Staffing Challenges
28:28 Effective Communication with Clients and Caregivers
31:12 Setting and Achieving Scheduling Goals
32:43 Daily Check-ins and Micro-Management Strategies
35:58 Utilizing Technology and Building Relationships
40:54 Marketing Strategies and Leave Behinds
43:10 Creative Leave Behind Ideas for January and February
48:48 Engaging Referral Sources and Caregivers
50:10 Final Thoughts and Announcements
Continuum Mastery Circle Intro
Visit our website at https://asnhomecaremarketing.com
Get Your 11 Free Home Care Marketing Guides: https://bit.ly/homecarerev
Hi, everybody Happy.
Speaker 2:Friday before Christmas.
Speaker 1:There we go. Hello everybody. Okay, hopefully I grabbed the right slideshow here. It looks like it Everybody's ready for the holiday Getting close. Five days, five days. I'm ready. I've got everything wrapped. It's all done Pretty much I'm pretty much ready.
Speaker 2:Just a couple little things.
Speaker 1:Happy holidays everybody. We will get started. It's December 20th. This is our last Mastery Circle of the year. We've got some announcements and stuff that we'll get to as we go through here. Go ahead, Valerie, We'll put you up for housekeeping.
Speaker 3:Okay, housekeeping, if you're new here or you haven't been to one of these in a while, we just keep all your lines muted unless you're talking, so we don't hear all the background noise. Share stories, experiences, tips, ask questions, make recommendations and tell us what you want to know. It's really nice when you send us a note, maybe through support or however you want to send it, and just tell us. I really wish we could talk more about and sometimes we've talked about it, but it's been a long time ago or whatever. So right now, if you were to log in, which I'll talk about, you can see everything we've talked about through the course of 2024. And it might have been a while since we covered that, or maybe we haven't covered what you're thinking of, but we love suggestions because, believe it or not, it's a little challenging to come up with new cool stuff to talk about two times a month for an hour.
Speaker 1:It does get to that place where it's like we talked about this and what could? How could we say it different? Or did we cover every piece of it? Yep, yep. We love topics.
Speaker 3:Yes, okay, next slide, oh, reintroduintroductions. Since I'm talking, I'm just going to say hi, I'm Valerie Van Boeven, I'm a registered nurse and the co-owner of Approved Senior Network and I am your online marketing gal, and these ladies are your in-person, although they do know a lot about online marketing, but they're your in-person sales folks. They're amazing and definitely I've just I'm editing a testimonial right now I have to and I'm just blown away by all the kind things that this guy is saying. It's just so nice. They do a great job. Believe what they say.
Speaker 1:I guess I'll go next. I'm Dawn Fiella. I've been in Approved Senior Networks close to three years now. My background is in home care close to 20 years I've been in operations, sales, marketing, recruiting, retention all of the above. I worked for a franchise and I also worked for an independent home care agency. I love growing the private pay side of the business. We help our clients with that in our sales training class and just in general. We're very much partnering with our clients to help them with all the things. We get calls. Oh my caregiver quality. The caregiver applicants that are coming in are just poor quality, why? And so we help them. Or what would you pay a marketer? Is it commission, is it salary? So we get all of those kinds of questions and love to help. Thank you for being here today.
Speaker 2:I know it's a busy time of year. We really appreciate that. Annette, you're up. Okay, Hi, I'm Annette Ziegler and I teach the sales training course classes for ASN and I just love what I do. I have over 20 years experience in home care. Almost eight years working as a marketing manager for a home care agency and here in upstate New York helped grow the business from 1 million to 4 million, and I love being on the other side of the spectrum teaching you how to get out there and get those private pay referrals and succeed in your business. And thanks for being here on this Friday before Christmas, yeah.
Speaker 1:And Lisa Marcellet is on vacation, so she is not here today, but she, I'm sure, welcomes wishing you and Mary. I think there's a slide. I think she even made a slide for you guys.
Speaker 3:We'll get there. I had no doubt that she would do something like that.
Speaker 1:Okay, Valerie, how to watch the meetings you miss.
Speaker 3:All right, since you're, maybe you're going to have a little downtime I hope you all do over the next couple of weeks. It's a great time to go back through and look at all the meetings that you've missed over the course of the year. 2024 is all in there. After this one posts, it will be the complete 2024. Every single meeting we've had all recorded, with the PDFs, with everything. So you're definitely going to want to go look, so you can go to homecaresalesforumcom. Put in your username that would be the email address that we've been sending you your notifications to and then, if you don't know your password, just use the forgot password feature. Keep going, you can change. Oh, and if you're on a desktop, so I'm going to talk about desktop and I'm going to talk about cell phone or smartphone If you're on your desktop. Once you're on a desktop, so I'm going to talk about desktop and I'm going to talk about cell phone or smartphone if you're on your desktop. Once you're in the forum, of course, look around, look at all the cool stuff going on there, but it's facebook, or if you've ever used slack. Anyway, we just talk about, post different things, talk about ideas. If you go to the learning tab, which is at the top where my big arrow is, from your desktop you can see all of the training stuff or all of the continuum stuff. So there you're going to see that. And then you go in here and here it is. You can see everything. I didn't. This screenshot only shows you the top half, but there's usually about two per month, so scroll through. We try to name them, what we talked about and there you go, so that's the whole what we talked about. And there you go, so that's the whole year.
Speaker 3:All right, so if you're on your mobile device and you're bored and you want to look at, review some of this, there's an app. So let's go to the next slide. It's called the Colab app, k-o-l-a-b Colab by Lead Connector, and this is where we keep the same exact stuff, but on mobile. So I put in here all the links to the iPhone version versus you can keep going Versus the Google one, when this presentation and any presentation, frankly, that we've done for the last several months. If you click on the PDF of all the slides, these links are live. But if you just go to your app store and type it in correctly CoLab by Lead Connector or just K-O-L-A-B you'll be able to find it. Download it. When you get there, you're going to want to make sure you join the group, if you haven't already, and then you'll be able to log in and see everything.
Speaker 3:Let's go to the next slide. So this is just some screenshots of different things that you can see once you've logged in all the people talking and different things that we talk about inside there. It's a lot of good ideas, and Annette is very good about hosting new things. I try to sneak in once in a while, but this is really good. All right, keep going. Oh, I thought there was one more, but that's okay. Here we go, I'm done.
Speaker 1:Yay, okay, so we have an important announcement Starting in 2025, mastery Circle will now be on Wednesdays instead of Fridays. We've had lots of people tell us that Friday's not a good day they're out marketing or they're dealing with call-offs and other things that might be going on, so we have moved this meeting to Wednesdays. The next one will be Wednesday, january 15th, and so the times for every time zone is listed there when it says register here. I'm going to put that in the chat right now so you can register. The link is in the chat, so we need for all of you to register. It'll be a new link for the year and it will be held now on Wednesdays, and the first one will be January 15th, and it's still going to be every other week. Yes, valerie, every other Wednesday still.
Speaker 3:Yep, and we do have an email going out to everybody sometime after the 6th of January, like the week before, or I don't remember what I told you in that but we do have an email going out that that will remind you that you do need to register again, even if you registered for this one in the past. We need to clean the slate here, and so if you are eligible for continuum or you're in continuum, you need to register at the new link. You don't have to do anything. It's just a Zoom registration, but it will be new, so you can't rely on the old information that you've been using. But anyway, we are going to send an email out, but this, this PDF, will also link you to it as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, All right. So we're going to finish our three-part series Ready Set Succeed. We're going to be talking about reviewing yearly performance metrics and again, this is part three of a three-part series, so if you missed one and two, you're going to want to go into the portal and watch those. There's also, I remember, a three-part series on how to get 24-hour clients. That was very popular, so I think that was like in April. So all of that is in the portal that Valerie showed you just a little bit ago. So the agenda for today is we're going to cover compliance and quality improvement and operational efficiency. But before we do that, every time we meet we give away free leave-behinds for a certain month. So today we're going to be giving away customized leave-behinds. So the leave-behinds that you will be taking out into the field and marketing with we're going to go, we're going to show them to you today, but we're going to go in and put your logo, your colors, your contact information and then we will send them all to you in a folder and you'll be able to edit them if you still want to. Most of the time, they're perfect exactly how they are. So if you would like to be in the drawing for one free giveaway. There is a caveat you must take pictures, when you are taking these out, of how you did it and where you took them, and send them to us so we can share them with everybody. If you want to participate in this and want to be in the drawing, just type yes in the chat feature down on the bottom. It's usually on the bottom, so I'm going to put the word yes in there now so that you guys know where to go and we will put you in the drawing and then one of you will get a free set of customized February leaf vines. Great, I see some people coming in there and doing that. Annette, will you keep track of those people today, since Lisa's off? Great, thank you, all right, so we're going to go ahead and get started.
Speaker 1:Compliance and quality improvement and I'm going to admit right from the get go, this is not my favorite thing. I don't know anybody who really loves this stuff. It's, I don't know, it's just a lot. I don't know, it's just a lot. It's a lot of detail and fine tuning, and there's so much going on in home care that it's really hard to sit down and look at this stuff, right, and so we have to. A lot of you have probably Medicaid clients and you have to. You get audited regularly. There's different states that come from probably come in and audit, just to audit, and then you've got Medicare and there's just a lot of different things. So we're going to cover that.
Speaker 1:I think it's a good time of year because, starting in January, you can take all of this and look at all the things. So we're going to cover. We're going to stay current with our regulations. We're going to monitor care standards, train continuously, document everything and improve processes. So I'm going to go into all of these just a little bit. If you guys have any questions, you can raise your hand or you can put it in the chat feature and we will be sure to answer them. So, staying current with the regulations so you should be regularly reviewing your state and federal home care guidelines to ensure your agency complies with licensing, reporting and safety requirements, and so that's going to be an important thing, like check that at least I would think quarterly A lot of times if you're in.
Speaker 1:The next suggestion is to subscribe to newsletters and alerts from state health services departments. That's a great way to be alerted because maybe you don't know, maybe something has changed, maybe there's a new guideline or new something that's come down the pike and maybe you don't know about it yet. So, subscribing to newsletters, engaging with industry associations and partner with organizations like Home Care Association of America or local home care coalitions, participating in webinars and conferences and forums that focus on home care compliance, and then I think it's really this Lisa put this in I think it's a really good idea to designate a compliance officer in your office, the person who's going to be like in charge of this. Maybe someone who's not scheduling and marketing and recruiting and doing all the things, someone who has the time and the ability to focus on this at least quarterly and can subscribe to the newsletters and go to these webinars and stay current with all of this. So a compliance officer is a really great idea because that person their eye's on the ball that way. So I think that's a great way to stay current is have one person in the office that's responsible for that.
Speaker 1:Monitoring the care standards, implement routine checks to assess caregiver performance, client satisfaction and adherence to care plans. What we did is we had what we called quality assurance supervisors. They would fill in shifts too. They did more than just quality assurance, but their job was every quarter they had to see all clients, all of them. We had 400 clients. It was a lot, but every quarter every client got a pop-in visit. Lot, but every quarter every client got a pop-in visit. We told the clients when we signed them up. This is how we monitor for care standards. We monitor our caregivers, we supervise our caregivers. We would tell them when we sign them up, because people don't always like a pop-in visit and some of them would say I want to know when you're coming, but I won't tell the caregiver because it is a surprise pop-in visit to make sure the caregiver is doing what they're supposed to do, the house is clean, they're dressed appropriately, all the things right, they're doing, they've got their logo wear on if that's what they're supposed to do, and closed-toed shoes or whatever your rules are. So every quarter, every one of our clients was seen by an equality assurance supervisor and it was a quality check. That's what this is. That's a part of it.
Speaker 1:Again, stay current with safety requirements like infection control protocols, caregiver certifications and proper care plan implementation.
Speaker 1:Ensure safety practices align with OSHA and other relevant guidelines and in-home assessments.
Speaker 1:I can't stress enough that you do need to do an in-home assessment. I know that sometimes, especially during COVID, we were doing a lot over the phone I myself would sign clients up in the skilled nursing facility having not seen the home, and that's really not fair to the caregiver, not fair to the client. So the day of service, if I hadn't seen the home, I would go start a shift because I wanted to make sure it's not a good idea that the caregiver be the one to see the 17 cats, right? Or whatever the case may be. I know you've all seen it, You've all walked into a home with a bunch of cats or there's a hoarding situation, or it's not a livable situation, right. So it's important that we always see the home and if we're signing up at the skilled nursing facility which I highly recommend we do that before they discharge somebody. Administrative wise, somebody from the office needs to be in the home at the first shift to make sure everything is okay. Annette, can you speak to that? Did you guys also do that kind of thing?
Speaker 2:Yeah, what we used to do is we would go see them do the assessments at the skilled nursing facility and we tried to get permission. Maybe they had a neighbor let us in or a family member. But we would try to go see the house prior If we had indications from just talking to them that we felt like this was going to. We have to see this first. If you can try, sometimes you can go and see it before the first day that they start, if you're in. Like I said, we didn't do that for everybody, but when I talked to families or the client and I had felt like this was going to be I think he's a hoarder or she's a hoarder or I need to check this out first and there were times we went and it was really unlivable and they had to have it cleaned before we could even start.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would agree with that, and a lot of times the social workers, if someone's referred it. This is another reason why it's great to get referrals, because they have some experience with this person and they will say to you the daughter told me she's a hoarder just a heads up. Or the daughter said she has 10 cats. Or the daughter will not stay at her mom's house because she thinks it's bad. So you get a heads up. If it's a referral too, which is nice, they will tell you what they've learned. Or there's that APS report that comes with her. Something's going on. That's why the referrals are so good, because you get some background information too. Also, if somebody has gone to the hospital or skilled nursing facility and they're already your client, it's really important to go out and reassess them, because things change and you don't want to send and you've got to change the care plan. If now they're using a walker and the care plan says they walk with assistance, that's going to really throw things off when the caregiver walks in the door. So it's going to be really important if they've been. If it was for pneumonia or flu or something, maybe not, but a lot of times things change for them when they've been in the hospital or a skilled nursing facility. So having somebody come out and reassess them and just make sure that the care plan matches what's going on is going to be really important to monitor those care standards. That's a piece of it.
Speaker 1:And sending out satisfaction surveys is always a great idea too. Our quality assurance person would do that. They would talk to the client, separate from the caregiver, to see how things were going. But I do think if you allow them to do satisfaction surveys anonymously, you're going to get more honest feedback than they're standing in front of somebody and they have to say actually your service is really terrible. A lot of people won't do that. There's some that will, for sure, but there's a lot that won't. So an anonymous satisfaction survey is always a good idea too. Do we have any questions? Everything's we're good. I haven't really looked in the chat feature. Okay, just let me know if anything comes up. Oh me.
Speaker 3:Oh, valerie has something. Yes, I don't know if everybody knows this here, but we can do satisfaction surveys for any client who wants them. I know there are companies out there that do this, like Home Care, pulse, and there's a whole program around it. But if you just want to send out emails to current clients or adult children of current clients, we can do that for you and I think we can make them anonymous. I'm pretty sure we can. But if you want to do it and know who they are, that's another thing we can do.
Speaker 1:Oh, we know who they are, but they don't know. We know. Is that what you're saying?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I don't know. I think we can do it. I'm not sure. Maybe we can't have to fill in their name, I'm not sure. But anyway, I know that we can probably do it anonymously anyway, but it's an easy thing to do. We just have to be. You have to be diligent about sending out those emails in bulk, but it's something that can be automated so that you're always aware of client satisfaction. Good to know. That's all caregivers.
Speaker 1:Caregivers too. Yeah, the caregivers too. We need to know how they're feeling about. All right. Training continuously Provide ongoing training for caregivers and staff to make high quality care and compliance with latest practices. Some training for the caregivers and even for admin staff. That are some good ideas. Or safety protocols Client engagement is a great topic.
Speaker 1:Communication with the office and that goes both ways. It's good for the office to know that they need to be communicating very well with the caregivers and the office and that goes both ways. It's good for the office to know that they need to be communicating very well with the caregivers and the clients, and the caregivers need to know that they need to be communicating with the office. We need to know what's going on in that home. There are eyes and ears. They need to understand how important that is, I think too for the caregivers probably admin also, but mostly the caregivers. Time management in the home caregivers probably admin also, but mostly the caregivers. Time management in the home so important and this is just something I always thought people just knew.
Speaker 1:But I started going into the homes with the caregivers the first day of service because we were getting complaints, just to see what they do and if they have dishes or laundry that need to be done. In my mind you get those started and then you're doing the other things while that's running. I had many caregivers that were doing the washing machine washer right as they left, and then the seniors left with wet sheets, not a made bed, or clothes in the dryer and that's not okay and it's a three hour shift and there really is no excuse for that not all to be done. So, helping them be efficient and think about those things If there's laundry, that's the first thing they need to do when they say hi to the client, make sure they're okay, but get the laundry going so we can get it done before we leave.
Speaker 1:So they do need some help sometimes with time management. If they're making a meal before they go or preparing meal ahead of time, it needs to be done and cooled so they can put it in Tupperware right before they leave. So it's just some of that. I have found that the caregivers need some help with some time management. I don't know if you guys agree. I don't know, annette, if you've seen the same. Those were a lot of complaints we got were time management.
Speaker 2:Yeah, same. They would call the office and say, oh, I have there's lawn. Can you let the next caregiver know that's coming tonight? There's laundry in the dryer. Sometimes they just don't think about it. But yeah, they need to. If it's a three or four hour shift. They need to start some of those tasks when they get there, so it's all done before they leave, and that'll increase your satisfaction with your clients and your attention, all of the things.
Speaker 1:Because we trained that in class, we had a whole time management in our orientation. Cultural sensitivity that's also going to be really important. I wish we could train some of our clients on that too, because it goes both ways. But cultural sensitivity is going to be a really important thing too, for admin and for your caregivers as well. So these are just I'm sure we could go on and on about what the training should look like for caregivers, but these are some really good kinds of things to throw in there for sure. All right, document everything.
Speaker 1:One rule to live by and I asked Annette right before we got on was this like this in your office? If it isn't documented, it didn't happen. I don't know how many times my staff would come to me. Oh, I told the daughter we'd be there on Saturday. No, you didn't happen. I don't know how many times my staff would come to me. Oh, I told the daughter we'd be there on Saturday. No, you didn't. It's not it. I don't see it anywhere. You did not have that conversation. That it's almost to that extent. You have to be that way, because in home care. You're flying by the seat of your pants, everyone is all day long and it's just crazy. There's so many details with clients, caregivers, staff, the doctor, everybody. It all has to be documented and we would tell everybody. If you did not document it, it did not happen. And the nurse is going to chime in and I know exactly what she's going to say Go ahead.
Speaker 3:Oh Lord. And when you go to nursing school, this is beat into your head until the only words are if you didn't document it, it didn't happen, which can really be a problem. If you said I gave them their pain medicine, if you didn't document it, it didn't happen. And that is for lawsuits. For everything, document everything, and your caregivers need to know that is so important. Now, being brief in documentation can also be helpful. You don't have to be a long blah blah, blah, blah blah, less is more sometimes. But document it or it didn't happen. I live by that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we got to a point where we live. Everybody in the office started saying it didn't happen, you didn't document it. It didn't happen. She said she's working Monday, wednesday, friday. Everybody in the office started saying it didn't happen. You didn't document it Didn't happen. She said she's working Monday, wednesday, friday. Now when did she say that? You're the only person that knows that? Because you didn't document it. So I cannot stress this enough. You may need that documentation. Down the road, medicaid may come in and say you didn't work these hours, or you didn't do this or you didn't do that. It has to be documented, every detail.
Speaker 2:I want to chime in. So we also made sure that they had to email us that they could not text, because they would text different people in the office and we're like no text. You have to email us and they have it, so we could have a copy of whatever was going on. That's a good idea too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, all right, whatever was going on. That's a good idea too. Yeah, all right. Improving processes Regularly evaluate and refine your care delivery, scheduling and communication methods to enhance efficiency and client outcomes.
Speaker 1:So always be focusing on efficiencies that you can make in your office. Communication is a really big deal to improve processes and technology. Think about where we are now with GPS and clocking in and out. I know it was a real pain in the beginning, but it's so much better now. We know they're there, right, we know they're at the home, they got there. They're clocking themselves in, clocking themselves out Most. I know there are some that it doesn't work or whatever, but for the most part, technology can be a real big piece of improving processes too. Right now we're going to talk about operational efficiencies.
Speaker 1:So when I was the operations manager, I was operations manager for about five years at a large homestead franchise, and so what I learned pretty quickly is you really need to check in with every department or team member throughout the day, especially if you're new as operations manager or they're new in their role, and it can seem like what is it when you're constant micromanaging? It can seem like that. It can seem like that for a little while until everybody gets into the flow of what you're doing. And when I started my scheduling team and that's the example we're going to use today we're like this get out of here. They have their own room, their own big office and they were always just communicating hey, can someone, can Sarah, take two o'clock Saturday? Anybody know? Anybody know? It sounded like an auction in there and they had a door and we kept it closed 100% of the time because they were so loud that they could not work without that chaos. It was chaos but it worked for them and they would. Did anyone talk to? She's still missing an action. Has anyone talked to someone? For this client doesn't need Saturday. I've got an open caregiver and Benny one or so like it was crazy in there, which it worked for them. That's fine. They needed their own space, they needed to be able to do that, but they really did not like the micromanaging. That's how it felt to them when this started. So I'm going to go through that.
Speaker 1:So, with each department or every person handling different things in your office throughout the day, check in with them. Are they on task and going to hit their daily goals? Where are they struggling? These are the things that you're thinking about when you check in with them, and is there an easier, more efficient way for them to complete their tasks? So we're going to go through the scheduling staffing kind of department as an example.
Speaker 1:So their goals, the goals that worked for me were they were needed to be able to, every week, be able to start three to four shift quick starts. So if my marketing person's out there and they're like we can start same day, we can start next day, we can start within 48 hours. Scheduling needs to be able to back that up. We need to be able to actually do that and Annette can probably attest tell you this too is this is how the social workers test you. They will literally give you oh, I've got one starts at seven o'clock tonight and it's like three. This is how they test to see if you really are able to do what you say you could do. So your scheduling staffing team need to be able to do and this is a larger company so this may not be right out the gate, but as you grow three to four quick starts a week. In order to do that they need to be staffed ahead 48 hours during the week, 72 hours on a Friday, 50 to 70% of the time.
Speaker 1:So what I mean by that is when you're a small company, a job comes in it's seven days a week, you sit down. You just stop it because it's not crazy busy and things aren't like. It's not busy yet, you're not big yet and you have open caregivers possibly as you get bigger. When a seven day a week job comes in, usually it is staffed Monday, wednesday, friday, and we've got that caregiver settled. Then Tuesday, thursday gets staffed usually, and then Saturday, sunday gets staffed. It's usually three different caregivers and it's staffed in chunks. And so when you look at your open shift screen or sheet paper, whatever it is, all of your open shifts that seven-day-a-week job, three days are staffed. But here's Tuesday and Thursday are still open. They're on my open shift. So at all times there is stuff on the open shift job board screen, whatever you want to call it, you print it out. So if they are staffed 48 hours ahead, this frees them up to deal with call-offs and quick starts. So if it is and we're going to go through what that looks like here, so I'll wait for that slide their percent of missed shifts should be less than 10%.
Speaker 1:This is a language thing. If a caregiver calls in sick and scheduling calls the client and says your caregiver is out sick today, they should not say would you like a? Nine times out of 10, that senior is going to say no, I do not, I'm fine, I do not need a replacement. When that happens, the adult child gets mad, your billing goes down and they get to see what life is without a caregiver and realize they're okay. And they think they're okay and they're probably not, because they don't realize all the things the caregiver is doing. It's really the language is really important that they're using. Instead it is your caregiver is out sick today, I will have somebody there in an hour, or Mary is on her way or whatever it is. They do not say would you like a replacement? You will lose a lot of hours doing that. They should be able to help you increase client hours based on needs.
Speaker 1:This is that communication with the caregiver. If caregiver's in there every other day and the day she comes back it's a mess, a shambles. She can tell that the client was struggling the day she wasn't there. She should be reporting that to the office. That gives the scheduling team a place to increase hours. They go back to the marketer or they call the adult child. However, your team does that at your office and suggest, hey, those two days a week we're not coming. The caregiver is very concerned. We're all concerned about your mom. There should be less than two to three lost clients a week. Now, again, this is a larger office but this includes deaths and different things that are going on. So the lost clients can be. They do have some control.
Speaker 1:If the caregiver is late three days out of five, probably somebody's upset about that. They may not be saying it, but they're probably upset about it. So I trained my client services or scheduling department to let the person who signed them up usually the marketer, know. Everything seems okay, but I wanted you to know. The caregiver has been late three days this week. Marketer calls adult child and says hey, how are things going with your mom? It doesn't say the caregiver has been late, but the adult daughter is going to go. Your caregiver has been late three days, but that's usually what happens in that conversation. So it's just like a check-in call to see how things are. You're not telling the daughter that the caregiver has been late, you're just checking in and number of caregiver shout outs.
Speaker 1:I was always asking my schedulers to please be looking for the good things that caregivers are doing. We need to recognize the caregivers, the ones that are out there saving the day in and day out. I want to be able to shout out to them in a newsletter, on my Facebook page call them, send them a card or send them something, because they're doing a good job. And it's good for the schedulers to be forced to watch for the good things, because they get mad at the caregivers because they call off and they're upset and they're tired of the excuses and so it's good for them to be watching for some good things. So when I'm checking in with my scheduling department a couple of times a day, these are some of the things that I'm looking at.
Speaker 1:Are they going to hit these goals this week? So are they on task to hit their goals? So let's pretend it's Wednesday. Are they staffed out so they can do a quick start? So on Wednesday, when they leave Wednesday night, they should be staffed through Friday. Everything should be staffed through Friday. So Thursday and Friday are staffed. So if I come in Wednesday morning and there is a bunch of jobs open on the open shift for Thursday and Friday. Those all have to be staffed before they go home.
Speaker 1:So what's the goal? How is that going to happen? So are they missing shifts? What language are they using? Are there any clients needing more hours? Are any lost clients or upset clients? Are they working on their caregiver? Shout out? So this is what I'm thinking about when I go in there. So the schedulers and I don't know about you guys and I don't know how that will say, but the schedulers I've ever worked with they work really well under pressure and when it's slow not so much. They almost have to have the pressure of stuff coming in to work really like to be on task.
Speaker 1:I don't know what it is, but I have seen that over and over again with my schedulers. So if it's Wednesday, what are their daily goals look like? If they are not staffed out to start a quick start, what can we do now? So what I implemented and this is where the micromanaging comes in I would go in at nine o'clock and I would say let's look at the open shifts sheet together. I printed it. It was just easier for me to print it. We just have a quick powwow. I'm like wow, there's 10 jobs, 10 open shifts, not jobs, 10 open shifts for Thursday and for Friday. And do you guys have any ideas on caregivers? Let's talk about that a little bit.
Speaker 1:So if this was like less than five minutes and some of them like I have no idea, I tried to call someone, I've got calls out, whatever, and I would say, okay, out of the 10, do let's. Can we get five done by two o'clock today? Does that sound reasonable? And you've got to get their buy-in right. We've got to get their buy-in on this, and so they would say, yeah, by two o'clock we could probably get five done. And so giving them little chunk goals throughout the day really helped a lot and I told them we're not going to do this forever. This is just until we get on some kind of, we get some traction, we get some things going. Are they missing shifts? I would talk about that with them. Are there any clients needing more hours? We would go through that. That was the first thing in the morning. Less than five minutes. Don't spend a ton of time with them. They've got stuff to do. It's a quick little powwow, so giving them the goals at the day can help.
Speaker 1:And so then I would come back at two o'clock and hopefully those five, five and when I would we would ask them what five should you guys work on? First? Of course they were the five that were on Thursday because they're tomorrow. So when I came back at two o'clock, hopefully those five shifts were staffed. Sometimes they weren't. Sometimes they staffed three for Thursday and two on Friday. That's still five, right, we're just trying to get through the day and get it done.
Speaker 1:And then I would come in at two and they'd say so-and-so called off for tomorrow. Now we have more. There's always stuff going on and that's okay and so I would sit with them. I think it helped them, feel I don't know like I heard them and understood the pressure. I think they enjoyed that piece of it.
Speaker 1:So at two o'clock we would set more goals for the end of the day. And so I did this for about two or three weeks and I really thought they were going to hate it. And so I went in one day and I said okay, we're done now. You guys can print this yourself, you can go through it, you can guide yourself. They begged me not to stop. They said please, let's keep doing this, because it forced them all to look at everything. They were all on the same page. They were focused. They really ended up loving it. So we did it forever Every day. We would check in twice a day with each other. I think it also helped too, and we'll go through this. So giving them the goals helps.
Speaker 1:Do they need help calling or texting caregivers? So this is the other thing the caregivers. They like some people in the office better than they like others. We had our HR person. They loved our HR person. They loved our HR person. So sometimes I would say you want me to ask Krista to call and see if she'll do that shift on Saturday? Yes, I would love that and Krista would call, and sure enough they can, absolutely I'll do that for you.
Speaker 1:No problem. So they like the help, they like the support, they like being heard, and so all of that really helped. So be sure to come back. If you tell them you're coming back at two o'clock, do it, and twice a day can have a huge impact. This is just one department, one team member, whatever you want to call it scheduling how I operationally help them be a little more efficient and hit their goals every day. Efficiency is really important. These are things I've learned in the net. If you have anything to add, texting caregivers is much more efficient.
Speaker 1:I know that WellSky has a way where you can send out blast texts for open shifts or that kind of thing. Texting them I'm not talking about individual people in your office. Texting them Like that can be very difficult. I'm talking about through the system. We're sending a text to a caregiver or a group of caregivers. Do they need the open shifts printed or do they prefer to look online, find out? Maybe it's a struggle for them to be scrolling through the computer screen to see what's open and what's going on. Maybe they would prefer it to be printed.
Speaker 1:Does your scheduling software have matching functions or that they're not using or mapping functions? At least when I used it, you could put up a map and it would show where all your caregivers were on the map and where all your clients were that were open, and so, visually, that was a great way to be able to see who's open they. Also you could put in attributes about clients and caregivers and where they lived, and it would match a little bit for you. If your software system has those capabilities and nobody's using them, look into it. They don't have time to figure that out, probably, but if you do, or someone who's techie on your team does have time to look into, that's a great thing to do. Help them build relationships with the caregivers so the caregivers are more willing to do favors.
Speaker 1:Schedulers can tend to be a little gripey and a little impatient, and it's because they have a really tight window to work with right and they just get it done Everybody's staff and then a call off happens and they're just ah right All day long. This is like how they're feeling. So they don't spend the time, not that they have a lot of time, but they need to learn a little bit about a caregiver, you know what? And if one caregiver learns that this caregiver has three children and they play soccer, put it in her profile. So now everybody knows that she has children and they play soccer. It's a quick hey, how are your kids Any soccer games? Recently, anyone can ask her that question. And now they're going to be best friends, so they need to be learning how to build relationships with the caregiver so the caregivers will do favors for them.
Speaker 1:Do they have the authority to offer a one-time bonus? If, in a pinch and you want to be careful with this, because if you're doing it all the time the caregivers get wind of this and they're like well, I'll wait till they offer a bonus before I take that shift. Because we had that happen we sent out a mass text to the caregivers $20 bonus, you pick up the shift. And then all of them started oh, they're going to get bonuses, I'm just going to wait to the last minute. So be careful with it. I would not send it out in a blast text. I would call my favorite caregiver and I would say hey, guess what? I have a shift for you. You get a $20 bonus're selling a shift, you're selling a job. You're selling services. We're all selling all of the time. Are they confirming schedules the day before? So this is another thing. Does your software and I don't remember if ClearCare does this or not will your software send a text out the day before saying remember, you have a shift tomorrow at two o'clock or you have this tomorrow at this time? If not, it's not a bad idea to have somebody call them and remind them that they have this shift, at least until they get used to the schedule.
Speaker 1:New caregivers especially, or if it's a new client for them, are they communicating with HR and marketing about what they need? If a bunch of 24s are coming in or clients are turning into 24s, they need to alert whoever's running ads and hiring caregivers. Hey, we need 24s in Sun Lakes, we need 12s in Mesa, like yesterday. They have to be communicating. It's really easy to get down in that hole and just be grinding and forget to tell everybody what's going on and what's coming in the door. And marketing needs to know too.
Speaker 1:If you have no caregivers in a city like none, marketing needs to stay out of there for a little while until HR can build that back up with caregivers.
Speaker 1:Now it can happen and I'm just going to say this because this was a really big struggle when I am we would market over in the east side of town market and then somebody in a sniff in the east side of town lives on the west side of town where we don't have caregivers and then scheduling like we told you not to market over there. Now there's a client over there. What are we going to do? And we're like we didn't market over there, they just happened to live. They were in a sniff, way far from their house, so that can happen. There's a little overlap from time to time, but for the most part, if you don't have caregivers in a certain area for right now, start running ads and tell marketing to stay out of that place for a little bit and that will help. Any questions Annette in there in the chat going on no questions okay, all right, here we go.
Speaker 1:Oh, valerie, you're up, you still with us, valerie.
Speaker 3:I am, yeah, okay, annette, I guess is going to talk about all of the leave behind. So if you haven't been here in a while or you haven't been here before, we talk about cost effective, easy leave behinds, and some are a little more complicated, I will give it that. But they require planning. But most of them are super simple and they work. So we have, we're going to show you January and February leave behinds. We try to go two to three months out so that you have plenty of time to order things, plan, do whatever you're going to do.
Speaker 3:And for a long time people were asking us it's great that you give us the links to these little products and tchotchkes that go along with the little handout, blah, blah, blah. But I would love it if you would just give me the link to that stuff somewhere. So we created a little store homecaremarketingnewscom forward slash store. If you go there you'll see January, february, march, april. We're going to keep a running list of all the different months that we have and you can go there.
Speaker 3:And it doesn't show you the handout, because those the lead behind that you print, because those are for you guys and continuum, but it will show you the products that you can order to go along with them, so you can go there if you want and you don't have to, you can go anywhere and order anything you want. We don't care, but we were just trying to make it easier for everybody to find what lisa typically puts these together, what she's talking about. I just put the link and the picture of it and you can go buy whatever you want. You don't have to use this, but here we go. So what else we got on the marketing store? Oh, that was it?
Speaker 1:This is from Lisa. Oh dear, sorry, I missed you. Happy holidays and see you next year. So she did create a slide for everybody. So there you go and look at her. Oh, there's Lisa. Oh, okay, look at her play on words there. Oh dear.
Speaker 3:I missed you. Very cute, I thought this was a handout.
Speaker 1:I was like, oh, this is Lisa's message to everyone Skip the saying happy See you next year. All righty, you are up in it.
Speaker 2:All right, yeah, so I can't take the credit for these. Lisa's so creative at making these leave-behinds. And, what's important, to use these fun little leave-behinds not just your facility specific because you want to catch their eye. Think of something different when you drop something off. So for January, we've got. Let us help you bring in the new year with less readmissions. Have a sparkling 2025.
Speaker 2:Studies show that hospital readmissions can be reduced by up to 25 to 50% when patients receive structured home care following discharge. Text us stay safe home discharge package and you leave your number. We've got the Canva and the Google links. Really cute. You can do this all through January and you could pair it with some sparkling cider. And, like Valerie said, you can go anywhere to get this stuff, but we try to make it easy for you. If you want to just go on Amazon, but you could probably pick them up at your Walmart or Costco. So this is a really cute thing to do for January. Then we've got let us make this the best year yet.
Speaker 2:These are cute little resolution cards that you can give your referral sources. Our goal is to help you reduce readmissions and ensure smoother discharges. Call or text Valerie about our discharge package with your phone number. And then we've got what you can pair it with these little cards, my new year's resolution, their little goal setting cards that you could put inside the envelope. She even has little cute paperclips there with hearts and these could be dropped off anytime.
Speaker 2:And then, for those of us like me that I'm looking out that winter snow and we're supposed to get a snowstorm today. So you winter folks, the weather outside is frightful. Partnering with us for care is so delightful. Holler text, Valerie, there's lots to snow about our delightful patient care team. And then you compare it with next slide, with little snowflake plans, snowflake sticky notes and our little hand warmers. So it's cute for the winter. Yeah, folks love it. And also January eat well, feel well. Our caregivers are trained in all types of dietary needs, understanding the importance of creating nutritious, healthy meal plans.
Speaker 2:January, it's time, time for healthy, fresh food. And you could pair it with next slide some cuties, little cuties, or clementines, some honey sticks or whatever you like, but these are cute little ideas. And then February we're going into February. This is we want you to mark your calendar. So February 21st is, Think, a Caregiver Day. Just like Dawn was saying, we have to be good to these caregivers. They're helping us. They're running out there taking care of our patients taking last minute shifts. Maybe have them come in for cookies and punch, or you can have them stop in. And Lisa found these cute little employee appreciation keychains or these little canvas pouches. I can't really read that it says, can you?
Speaker 1:see that, Be proud of the work you do, the person you are and the different things.
Speaker 2:Perfect. You don't have to necessarily buy them a little gift. You can just have them come in for cookies. But mark it on your calendar. Do something special for your caregivers. They'll appreciate it. Don't let last-minute discharges cast a shadow on your day. Our caregivers are prepared to get your patients home safe and grounded within just a few hours. Happy Groundhog's Day.
Speaker 1:Love it, and so that's for SNFs, and then the other one is for.
Speaker 2:Don't let a fall cast a shadow on your day. Our caregivers are trained to prevent falls and help keep clients safe at home and grounded, so we've got two different ideas for you there, for.
Speaker 1:Groundhog's Day. I love this one. I think it is adorable.
Speaker 2:And then heart healthy tips. February is American Heart Month. Of course, we know that Our caregivers can help seniors stay healthy at home by helping relieve stress, prop healthy meals, get regular physical activity, maintain a healthy weight, get quality sleep, get regular blood pressure and cholesterol checks. Call or text Valerie for more information for all your home care needs. This one, I love. Feeling like life just turned up the heat, don't sweat it. We have trained caregivers standing by to take the heat off family and provide excellent care at home for all situations. Call or text Valerie for all your home care needs. Love this one yeah, it's.
Speaker 1:National Sauna Week.
Speaker 2:That's for Lisa, for creation.
Speaker 1:Yep, yep, she created this for National Sauna Week.
Speaker 2:When you think about it, these things. A lot of home care agencies are just dropping off their brochures with a little candy or cookie. This is going to catch their eye and it's something different and they really do appreciate it. Some sometimes I'd get somebody text me or call me and say that was the cutest thing you dropped off.
Speaker 1:They appreciate it and I think it really helps you to stand out. And I know I sat with a marketing or home care agency with his marketers and he was just like, did not think this was the thing he's just. I just cannot believe this is going to do anything. His girls went out, did it and, oh my God, it just took off. It seems like such a little insignificant thing to do and it's not that difficult, but the reward for it if you're doing this and going to this length, they equate this to the services you're providing. That's really what it comes down to.
Speaker 2:Okay, and then all these little fun things you could pair with any of those tags. We have a little chapstick holder, puffy palm ball, wristband change, little heart stress balls Everybody loves those Shower steamer, aromatherapy, and these are all in the store that Valerie was talking about. You just click on February and then click on the picture and it takes you right to the Amazon link or wherever the link that we're telling you to purchase it, and you can go to the dollar store wherever, but everything's pretty cost effective and very low price that we pick for you. And then February do a Valentine's giveaway. Text me by February 10th and enter to win a Valentine's Day self-care gift basket. The reason why we love to say text me is because then you get their text and then you're on a texting basis with your social workers or your case managers or discharge planners.
Speaker 1:It changes your whole relationship to being on a texting basis. It's crazy.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And then you could pair it with these cute little guess how much candy in the jar little cards and they'll text you and tell you how much how many skittles are in the jar and you put all their name in for the drawing and pick the winner. Post it on your social medias. Tag the person, tag where they work. It's a fun thing, they enjoy that. Okay, and then back by popular demand.
Speaker 2:This was something that I did back when I worked in home care. This is a cute little card that you can make coffee time on me, redeemed by text. I used to put it in little thank you cards. You can change it up. You can say text me your favorite Dunkin' Donuts Starbucks order or, if you want to, just set a date to meet with somebody. But these really do work and I had somebody in a sales training class a couple of weeks ago that she had sent 40 or 50 out in cards and during the class she said I just got a text from a director of nursing that wants to set up a time for me to bring her coffee. So it worked, it's easy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, love it, love it. Okay, that's it, folks. Anybody have any questions? I haven't looked up in the chat.
Speaker 2:No, just remember if anybody is interested, we're going to do a drawing for these February leave behinds Dawn. We create them for you with your logo, your phone number. So if you're interested in being in the drawing, before we sign off here, put yes in the chat.
Speaker 1:All right, we're going to. Oh, we've got some more yeses, annette. Make sure you get them before we close out for the year. So thank you everybody for coming Again. There's a change. We will be. If you came in late, we are now going to be on Wednesdays the times we will send you emails. You'll get all the things you need to re-register with Zoom. The link is in the chat. That'll also be in the emails that we send to you. So we will see you on Wednesday next time, january 15th. Happy holidays, happy new year. I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday with your family, friends, and we will see you next year. Thank you, bye-bye everybody.
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