Hospitals are by far the most difficult referral source to get into and begin generating referrals. In order to successfully develop these accounts, you need to assemble a team. In this clip from The Black Hawk Boot Camp, Steve “The Hurricane” shows you how…
Now that we’ve done all of the reconnaissance. Now that we’ve done our plan. We got our plan together. We got our strategy. Before we march into battle, let’s assemble a team. Find out who your community makes rounds there. Who are the nurse liaisons? Who are the people making rounds at this place? That is super important because we’re gonna talk about shadowing them, all right?
One of the things that I teach all of our clients with Power Partners is to create combined programs. This is very advanced but you gotta have those Power Partners. Once you really get those power partnerships, you can create a readmission initiative working with your home health or with your hospice companies that you can program. You can do that kinda stuff with your referral partners and then you go together, you co-market, it’s hard to kick two people out especially if you have somebody who’s a Power Partner of yours who’s already in there all the time as one of those nurse liaisons. They’re always in there picking up clients. You can totally, totally go in with that person and shadow that person.
Schedule them out and you gotta commit to it. That’s a big thing. You’ve gotta commit to it because I’ve seen people start to do it and then it doesn’t happen right away, then they give up and they end it. Now, you have to commit to this. What is the commitment? We’re gonna make this program and we’re gonna go out and we’re gonna promote it for the next six months before we take a look at our results and see what happens. That’s a commitment. It’s a commitment of time, it’s a commitment of resources, it’s a commitment of energy, and it’s also a commitment of possible frustration. But this combined program, this commitment to each other when you go out there and you’re doing this, and you’re putting it out there, putting it out there, putting it out there, we’re gonna do this, we’re gonna do that, when the home health gets the referral and then they see that this is somebody’s who’s perfect for your combined program, they call you while they’re sitting there with the patient.
That’s a big one, Write that down. The nurse liaison, write that down. I’m gonna say that again. The nurse liaison is the one who should call you immediately when somebody could use what we do as part of this combined program. Don’t wait until the person comes home and the social worker gets involved, it’s too late then.
Let me ask you something folks, how does somebody know that it’s a readmission? How does somebody know if it’s a safe discharge or not? An unsafe discharge. They know it’s an unsafe discharge when that person is now in the ambulance going back to the hospital. It’s too late when the person’s home. If we’re gonna make an impact, if we’re gonna help improve outcomes, which is what we wanna do, that’s why we’re all here. If we’re gonna do that we have to make sure we do it from the hospital discharging them home immediately and wrapping around that Medicare benefit.
For my private pay folks a great combined program, you know why the home health like this combined program? Because from a Medicare standpoint they have two full days, 48 hours after the discharge which means if I get sent home from the hospital today, not tomorrow or Friday, not Saturday, but by Sunday somebody will come out and see me. Now if I had a massive stroke, I’m 85 years old and live by myself, what am I gonna do for the next two and a half days? Try to help myself and get hurt and be back in the hospital. But if that home health was smart and they brought in a Power Partner and the combined program, the private duty although I’m paying for it, they could even pick me up from the hospital, bring me home, and set it up all the way through the home health coming in two days later. It makes sense.
This is a gateway into preferred provider groups that I was talking about yesterday with you. You always hear me talk about this. I always say everything goes back to Power Partners. It all comes back to Power. You wanna get in the hospitals, Power Partner. You wanna get into skilled nursing facilities, Power Partner. You wanna double and triple your business like all of these folks here? You wanna win one of these awards? This category? We wanna win one of these? You gotta create Power Partners. It’s as simple as that which is very difficult. But that’s what it is and then you commit to each other and you make this happen. You commit to that combined program and then be ready for this. This was one of my favorite things about hospital marketing.
By the time I went to Robert Wood Johnson Hospital and Centra State Medical Center, I was already receiving referrals from every single referral source that they feed. So every SNF, every CCRC, every home health, every hospice, every medical equipment company, all of the people that the community, they were all referring me business and the hospital feeds all these folks. So many a time I’d come in and say a lead, I’m being introduced to you, I’m shadowing with Tom here and Tom introduces me to you, you’re the director of case management.
And Tom goes, “This is Steve, he’s my Power Partner, “we have this great combined program,” blah, blah, blah, blah, we’d love to talk to the rest of the team about it. “Oh hi Steve, nice to meet you. “Yes we put this program together. “I know I caught you at a bad time, “we literally just walked in here. “Can I schedule a time to come back and see you “one-on-one and go over this program with you? “Tom could come with us.” While that’s happening, because this happened all the time, while that’s happening Robin comes walking in to see Aleta and Robin’s like, “oh,” and you see Robin and you’re like, “Oh hi Robin.” And Robin goes, “Steve! “What are you doing here? “Oh my goodness.” “Oh one second Aleta, I’m sorry. “Hi good to see you. “How are things going? “How’s the husband? “We love that guy, he’s a good man. “How’s everything going, awesome. “I haven’t seen you in like six months.”
Now you know what happens when that happens right there? Aleta’s like, wait a second, I want that. I want that kind of relationship. I know Robin for 15 years. I’ve referred her thousands of patients over the last 15 years, how have I never heard of you. I also know Tom for five years and this is the first time I’m meeting you? And then all of a sudden now this drop-in visit because of chance all of sudden now this becomes a five, 10 minute thing.
Then all of a sudden Sadie shows up and Sadie from you know, John Doe Amazing Skilled Nursing Facility. And you come in, “Hi Aleta. “Steve what are you doing here? “Oh my goodness.” And then you’re literally overwhelmed. You’re like you know everybody. Well if you refer and work with everybody else, then we wanna work with you too. That’s what happens when you develop your territory. It happens for many of my clients too when that happens and it’s beautiful. That’s the best case scenario. So go into it prepared for that by knowing our community.
Want to learn more? Join us this March in Houston for The Hurricane Boot Camp!
