Here's a method that can get you new home health starts-of-care today. If you are an established home health agency, and referrals have declined recently, then you have nurses who are not fully scheduled. Schedule time for each nurse to sit in the office and telephone your old patient list. Have nurses call patients and families they themselves served. It's a simple follow-up call as a courtesy. The tone of this call is friendly and helpful. Overt sales tactics are discouraged. Let the nurses be nurses. This is not a task for your community liaison. Ask specific questions about the patient's health status related to the conditions you know they have. Ask general questions about their health. The goal is to have a real and helpful conversation about their health status. When you have real conversations with them, you will find that a few of them have a current skilled need.
A busy home health agency in a temporary decline will get three or four starts of care from this activity the first time you do it. Effectiveness will go down over time, but this activity should be repeated quarterly. In addition to the referrals that clearly come from this activity, you will build loyalty, appreciation, and top-of-mind awareness with your past census. This will likely have a positive effect on referrals in a more general way.
Along the same lines, quarterly patient newsletters are a good way to cultivate loyalty and awareness among your past patients while also reactivating past patients. If you can get a list of 850-plus past patients and non-doctor referral sources, Brazzell Marketing Agency can create an easy quarterly patient newsletter for you. For one client, we are designing, writing, printing, and mailing up to 1,000 newsletters for less than $950 per quarterly newsletter. Call toll-free (866) 272-3799 for details.