By Amanda Green, HTS Director of Marketing
1. Rehab Services: Rehabilitation Outcomes
As many of you already know, our hospital discharge planners and physicians are overloaded with senior care communities trying to get through their door. Stand out from the masses with clear, concise data on your facility’s rehabilitation outcomes by diagnosis. Through measurable outcomes, the efficiency and worth of your services are shown. Measurable rehabilitation outcomes allow you to prove your success in clinical areas and can significantly align your community with referring partners. With increased legislation for reimbursement-based quality outcomes, hospitals need good partners to build a strong “bridge” in the post-acute arena before discharging to home. In the minds of the medical community and general public, your outcomes are reflective of your level of quality. How can YOU be a good partner?
Answer these few questions regarding outcomes:
- How do you communicate quantifiable rehabilitation success to your patients, families, insurance companies and physicians?
- How do your rehabilitation outcomes compare to national benchmarks?
- Can you provide your length of stay (LOS) by diagnosis for both Medicare Part A and Part B?
- Do you receive Patient Outcomes reports after discharge?
This data is not above the heads of our general population, but sought after when determining where to take their loved one. In addition to 5-star ratings and www.medicare.gov/nhcompare , our community is looking for hard evidence of success, beyond the resident testimony. Rehabilitation Outcomes will help you gain this advantage. If you are currently not receiving outcomes from your therapy provider, you don’t know what you’re missing.
2. Client Success Stories: The Ultimate First Impression
If there are two things I know… 1. Consumers typically choose health care providers based on word of mouth. 2. Nobody is shopping for a “nursing home” unless they really, really need it.
Capturing client success stories is a magnificent way to gain a positive first impression from afar. Most of us have witnessed amazing examples of our residents overcoming obstacles and achieving the impossible. When we fail to capture and glorify this success and share it with the public, we are doing an injustice to our industry as a whole. This injustice perpetuates the belief that people go to a “nursing home” to die. We know that not to be true. There is an enormous amount of healing, restoration and vitality within our walls. Let the world see and hear this success on your website, newspaper, billboard and other media outlets. Word of mouth is still the best and most cost effective way to advertise.
Therapy should be working together with your marketing department to capture testimonies and success stories. Certificates of achievement or graduation, pictures, graduation parties or case studies are just a few of the many ways therapy can get involved in highlighting success.
3. Rehabilitate Your Look
Take a look at your therapy space. Ask yourself, “Is this a motivating atmosphere?” With simple and cost effective uses of color and strategic organization, you can renovate your department to be an inviting, motivating space that promotes recovery. When someone comes to tour your community, you want your therapy department to be one of your strongest features.
HTS uses psychologically appealing design, artwork and gym flow to enhance the look and feel of your therapy department. We help our clients create a space that is fun to sell.
Have you ever walked in your therapy department and thought to yourself, “1980 called and wants all of this stuff back?” It is 2013 folks, technology is king. Statistics have already shown us that 50% of the buying behavior of mature markets is focused on new products and technology. If you don’t look like the best option in town, why would they choose you?
4. Educate the Masses
Community programs (what HTS calls “Wellness Workshops”) are essential in building rapport with your local community. No one knows more about how to prevent falls, manage CHF and adapting diets for diabetics than you and your staff. Wouldn’t it be nice to lend that information to the general public? Position yourself as THE resource for health-related information by educating your community.
“Our HTS therapy department just finished a 4-part series on fall prevention that drew over 150 people from the outside community. These are people that do not live on our campus and wouldn’t normally walk in our building. They came because the information was relevant and important to their daily lives. This resulted in several inquiries to live on our campus and 3 people for outpatient therapy.”
-Nancy Jones, Corporate Marketing Director, Baptist Homes of Indiana.
Any time we are educating, we are indirectly selling. However, our mission is more than just maintaining occupancy. We have an obligation to our community to keep them informed. HTS provides their clients with internal and external wellness workshops, testing on various health metrics and in-service modules to assist in educating your staff, family members, physicians and general community.
5. One of the Best Sales Features…Right Under Your Nose
Sell Your Therapy Team!
In over a decade, I have been on some REALLY BAD tours and secret shopping experiences. I couldn’t believe how poorly therapy was represented during the touring process. Since therapy is pretty much the largest reimbursement component of a skilled stay, you would think the person giving the tour would know therapy inside and out, right? Marketing/Admissions representatives should not only be able to effectively talk about rehabilitation, but also should be able to hone in on the specifics of your unique therapy program. Train Marketing staff to include these talking points in their tour. Know what the therapy equipment does and be able to list examples of conditions that would most likely benefit. Know and understand what skills your team members bring to your “clinical table” so that you can effectively market this to your community. Do they use evidence-based practices or have specialized programs for orthopedics, CHF, COPD, CVA/Stroke, Cardiac Conditions, etc.? How many cases did your therapy team treat this last year? What were the results? Knowing this information does several things…
- Instills confidence in the care that the public will receive when they walk in to your building
- Positions your community as a trusted community partner being the #1 provider of rehabilitation and recovery in your area.
- Builds rapport with Physician/Hospitals to generate referrals
To learn more about how Healthcare Therapy Services, Inc. helps clients build census and positions communities to be THE superior provider for rehabilitation, contact Amanda Green, Director of Marketing at 317-523-7358 or email her at amanda@htstherapy.com.