What’s up, everybody? It’s Steve, “The Hurricane”. And for today’s episode of “A Drink with The Hurricane”, we are going to go over the three best referral sources for new patients, and a tip on how to get into each one of them. So raise your glass and let’s toast to your success. Cheers.
This is “A Drink with The Hurricane”, the talk show discussing all things growing your home care business. This video is sponsored by Home Care Evolution, where we help home care agencies adapt to changing circumstances, transform their business, so that they can thrive for years to come.
So when it comes to sales and marketing for a home care business, this is my favorite area of expertise. I used to be a director of business development long before I became the vice president of my own agency and got involved in operations and finances and everything else. So I love sales and marketing, and knowing where to go is one of the most important things that we have to do when it comes to developing professional relationships with our accounts, so that we’re not wasting our time. So to work smarter instead of harder, the Home Care Pulse report showed that the masters of the industry, i.e. people who are generating over 5 million in private pay revenue, those folks’ best three referral sources were assisted living communities, continuous care retirement communities, and hospitals. So I’m gonna give you a tip on how to get into each one of these three accounts.
The first one is your assisted living community. And the tip that I’m gonna give you here for this is getting a relationship going with your director of nursing. The director of nursing is responsible for all things clinical for all the patients who live in her community. As a result, when somebody has reached a point where their level of care has declined dramatically, so much so to a point that they are no longer AL appropriate, now she has to have a very difficult conversation. And that conversation is one that usually ends with you have to move out and find another place to live. And it’s usually a nursing home, because you’re no longer assisted living appropriate. Most people don’t like that, especially when they’re paying a lot of money to be in the assisted living community and the cost of being in a nursing home nationally averages around $10,000 a month. So what the alternative is, is this assisted living director of nursing can make a referral to a private pay agency, so that that agency can then send a caregiver in to cover the needs of this patient. The patient will then drop from top level care at the assisted living down to base level, which is closer to five, $6,000 a month. And then having a caregiver one on one coming in is also another five 6,000 a month. Five, 6,000 plus five, 6,000 is 10 to 12,000. It’s almost apples to apples what it would cost to live in a skilled nursing home, but the person can stay in the assisted living community, which is the place this patient has probably called home for several years. And most people don’t wanna move into a nursing home. And I’m not putting nursing homes down. It’s just the truth of the matter. So when people have a choice, they’re gonna go with home care almost every single time. That’s your tip on getting assisted living referrals. Develop a tight referring relationship with your director of nursing.
The second referral source being your continuous care retirement communities. The quick tip on this is to become the onsite agency. Not everybody has the ability to do this because a lot of continuous care retirement communities already have an existing relationship, but I have a client of mine or two who are in the Washington DC area where they’re doing well over $5 million a year in total annual revenue, and a solid 3 million of that comes from being on site at three area continuous care retirement communities. Each of these communities, you should be able to grow your onsite presence billable hours to about 800-ish hours per week. And if you have two or three of those, that’s gonna bring in close to 2,500 hours a week, which is about $3 million in total annual revenue just from being on site. It also allows you to do things like set up care, where you could have an hour here an hour there, because you could have one caregiver take care of several people in the community. And you also have an onsite presence where patients with need can come to you and knock on your door, literally in the community that you are serving. So that’s my tip on working with continuous care retirement communities.
Finally, the juggernaut, the most difficult referral source to get into for any type of home based provider, whether you’re home health, hospice, or private duty, the hospitals. The tip I’m gonna give you here, and there’s plenty more that can go into. As a matter of fact, if you want more tips and advice in scaling and growing your home care business and marketing to referral sources and so on, make sure you’re subscribed to receive the Home Care Evolution quarterly magazine. It’s free information that you’ll have access to, which will give you everything you need to blow away the competition, including how to develop relationships at hospitals. Now, the tip I’m gonna give you here is to make sure you have strong community power partners. Because hospitals are so difficult, you want to have more people who are working with you outside of the hospital. Leverage the relationship with those folks to help you to meet people inside the hospital. And then, because you’re working with so many other partners that the hospital is already working with, they in turn will give you a chance before someone else that they don’t know, which is your foot in the door, so that you can start the process of developing a referring relationship.
So there you have it, folks. These are the three best referral sources for 2022 and a tip on how to get into each and every one of those. If you want more help, go to my website, homecareevolution.com, where you can get the access to the magazine and find out about all the services and offerings, our conferences and more, where we’re gonna give you everything you need to blow away the competition.
So folks, I’m Steve “The Hurricane” and I just spent three days teaching all these people how to..
“Blow away the competition!”