At the last Hurricane Boot Camp, we did a live Q and A with Steve and a few of our amazing Coaching Clients. Here are 2 questions that they answered!
Attendee Question (Michael)
“So I just finished Fast Start, and I went through, I got with my first power partner, which is a home health agency. Did the breakfast and learn, everyone’s excited, I have coupons for them. So we’re already referring. Well, I gave them one referral that we teamed up on. That agency acquired a compassionate hospice agency, and I’m expanding to another territory. So, philosophically speaking, when you have a home health power partner, should you work with their integrated organizations for the next stool, which is the hospice? Or do you try and spread it out and go with another separate agency that’s not tied to that power partner you solidified, hoping that they may, I don’t know if their hospice may send you cause of that relationship with home health, and you just start branching off at other organizations?”
Gus
I would stick with the independents. So I would stick with the stand-alone hospice and the stand-alone home health. You’re probably gonna get some of the referrals from that home health agency that’s incorporating their hospice naturally if you’re good. I was told once, “Hey you’re good, we’re good, “let’s team up.”
So that’s gonna come kinda from you just being good, but I’d definitely work with the stand-alone hospice. And one thing I recommend is get with the owners. Cause you’re putting money in their bank, and if you’re making them happy, they’re gonna tell all their marketing reps to use you. So you wanna kinda break ground with the marketer, but your goal is to get one-on-one with the owner, because they’ll change marketers, but the owners will stay with you.
Terry
We had the opposite problem, because we had our first power partner was bringing it down to working on them before we even joined the company, but we took that relationship, and I think we’ve made it really, really solid and we’re having a ball doing it. I keep coming back to that. But we went and we were looking for a home health company that was a stand alone. Try to find one. Just try to find one. And our marketing was ridiculous, and then Sam, well, I’ll let you tell the story.
Sam
We got really lucky, where we had the hospice power partner, and that was going really, really well, and we were looking for that stand-alone home health company like Terry mentioned. We’ve recently started developing a relationship with that stand-alone home health company, and we’re just now starting to power partner co-marketing with the hospice and the home health, but we went through the whole process, where we met with the owners, we met with the leadership team, and it’s going together pretty seamlessly.
Steve
Excellent, it’s so funny, this is what I love about it because I was like, “Look, look, look, look. “My amazing students here, let them tell you.” And that’s exactly it. Remember the process that you went through to create this first power partner. So, you want to do the same thing again. Now they just acquired a hospice, just that transition alone is going to be a six-month window. People will get fired, there will be turnover, and everything else. To go right at them right now is not the wisest decision. Keep trying to get out there.
Now also remember the training part of it, too. Michael, right? I thought I recognized you. So, remember in the other part of the training too, that I told you, he could have two of each type of power partner. So it’s okay to get another hospice going while they’re getting things done and you plant seeds. Maybe, at the beginning of Q4, then I’ll come in, I’ll meet with the rest of the staff, but still do your due diligence qualifying those power partners before you start running with them.
I find that a lot of companies that have multiple arms either do one of three things.
- Fail at it, that’s the majority.
- Focus on what they know best, which is the home health, and so the hospice becomes secondary.
- Or, if they do it right, they run them as completely separate companies and then they have great statistics each way, even though they’re the same parent company, they run completely independently of each other.
See that process through, but get another hospice power partner going at the same time. Excellent.
Next Question
“My wife and I have owned our home care business for four years, we’ve learned so much. We started, we met Steve in Sacramento about a year ago. We did change over to 20 hours for a lot of our clients, but we are running into a problem with clients running out of money. So, they start with 20 hours, but then after a period of time, a month or six weeks, so what do you do in that case? How do you transition?
Terry
We work really strongly with discharging referral sources and it’s always better to have more upfront and taper off than to go the other way. Because if you do that, then it’s a fall risk, and re-hospitalizations, so we market that way. We say, “Hey, it’s better to put more in at the beginning “and then taper off if you can.” What you can do about people running out of money, I don’t know if there’s an answer for that, I just don’t.
Steve
I got one. So, I was ready for that cause I actually had that for part of what I used to do when I ran my home care business and this, I can honestly say in 18 boot camps, I’ve never been asked this question. I used to do this myself back in the day, I used to find out right upfront, right when I got started, how much resources somebody has.
These, while it’s a very personal question, well, we’re going to be giving mom a shower, right? That’s also a very personal question, a very personal thing. So, I need to know the resources. As I was working with people, I would talk to them about Medicare and Medicaid, and I’m talking about the Medicaid spend down and how spending with our company will help spend down.
Now I’m gonna tell ya, if you have clients that are living at home and they’re starting to run out of money, that is kudos and a testimony to you and your agency because you are keeping these people home. If it wasn’t for you, they probably would’ve passed away by now. They probably would’ve had something major happen to them, which would’ve caused them to go to a hospital, and they would’ve had to move into a nursing home. But when I find out what kind of resources someone is working with, I try to get to a point where they have, say 40, between 30 and $40,000 in resources left.
When they get to that point, that’s when I have to start talking about, “We need to start thinking transition. “Your mother is doing well, thank God, praise the Lord, “she’s still here, but she’s gonna start to run “out of resources, and eventually she may need placement. “I’d rather her go into a place “while she has some resources, “where she can pick where she wants to go, “and then spend down that last 20 to $30,000 there, “and then remain there on Medicaid “versus wait till she has no resources left “and then she’s a direct Medicaid “and she doesn’t have any choice. “She goes where the government tells her to go.” Because some of those Medicaid places, with all due respect out there, those of you who know it, I’ve been in some of them, I would not send an animal into some of those Medicare, Medicaid places. So be proactive on it, remember what I said before. The golden rule of this boot camp, referrals equals what?
Audience
“Freedom.”
Steve
Freedom. The abundance of referrals you can start to graduate and that’s care coordination. That’s taking care of your clients for the rest of their life, even if the rest of their time isn’t with us, that’s how we used to do it. Very first time, seven years in business, never been asked that question. Thank you. Give that up, that was a good question.
Boot Camp Testimonial
“That was amazing, I mean Steve and his team, they have so much real world experience. They’re telling you from what they actually done in the field. They can simplify it down to a process so that you can implement it in your own agency. It’s very teachable, it’s very learnable. I mean, this is my second time coming, and you learn 80% of it the first time, but the second time, there’s always like hints and things that you pick up that you can add. What if I try this? And it’s just I got thinking creative. They’re just out of the box ideas, like how can we work with hospice agencies that we know? They’re just so many things that are going crazy in my brain right now, of new ideas that we can go implement.”
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