HomecareCRM Blog

CRM in the Hospice Industry

Mon, 07 Jun 2010 20:43:00 GMT

As the nation’s population ages, the hospice industry has little choice but to expand. Baby boomers are graying and fueling demand for quality care both now and as they near the ends of their lives. Today’s hospice organizations are seeing increased patient loads. In fact, according to the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization, in 2004, the benchmark of serving over 1 million patients was reached for the first time. In 2009, over 550,000 people volunteered their services as hospice volunteers. With millions of patients and volunteers to manage, smart hospice organizations are turning to CRM software.

CRM, or customer relationship management, software serves the hospice industry on several different fronts including as customer service tool, caseload management tool, and as a sales tool. Together, improvements in each area deliver another positive benefit: a competitive advantage.

CRM as a Customer Service Tool

While CRM is primarily associated with managing customer relationships, your patients, their family members, and your referral sources are your customers. In hospice, not only do you need to keep your primary customers, your patients, comfortable, you also need to communicate effectively with other parties involved in their care. CRM software designed for the home health care industry helps you to manage relationships with all of your customers. You can even set it up so that physicians are instantly notified when a specific event such as a death triggers such as notification.

CRM as a Caseload Management Tool

Depending on the size of your hospice organization, having a central database where employees can readily share notes, histories, and other patient data may be crucial. Because of patient privacy regulations such as HIPAA, security is essential. Make sure to select a CRM program designed specifically for home health care and hospice organizations so that only those who need access to protected health information can get it.

In addition to access to critical data, CRM software also includes tools for managing activities, time, schedules, and productivity. Manage patients as well as hospice workers and volunteers with these easy-to-use tools and reports.

CRM as a Sales Tool

Your sales force will also want to take advantage of your investment in CRM software. Whether your sales team uses laptops or PDAs, they can readily enter their field notes and manage their referral sources with the software. CRM software designed for the hospice industry includes referral source management tools such as referral source conversion rates and hierarchies. Using these tools, your sales team can identify which hospitals, practices, and physicians are sending the most referrals and which are not. From planning call routes and sending thank you notes to keeping referral sources apprised of the patient’s condition, customer relationship management software ensures that your sales professionals are equipped with the tools they need for success.

CRM as a Competitive Advantage

Finally, CRM software delivers a competitive advantage. After all, the hospice organization that provides excellent care and regularly, and promptly, communicates with all parties concerned will earn the trust and respect – and future referrals – of those parties.

America is aging, and with the gray hairs comes an increased need for hospice services. Are you positioned for the boom?

How CRM Differs for Home Health and Hospice

Mon, 12 Jul 2010 19:59:00 GMT

Customer Relationship Management, or CRM, is a business strategy that emphasizes the importance of the customer from acquisition, service, and satisfaction to customer loyalty and retention. Like all businesses, home health and hospice businesses serve customers, in this case patients. However, standard CRM processes don’t address the unique needs of home health and hospice providers.

For example, while you may think of the patient as the customer and your mission is to provide the best possible care and comfort to this customer, your customer base extends far beyond your patients. Who refers patients to you? Case managers, doctors, nurses, rehab directors, insurance agents, trust officers, lawyers, family members of previous patients, and so on. These referral sources are also your customers and should be managed through CRM just as you manage your patients.

Next, imagine a single terminally ill patient who has been referred to you by a doctor. As you care for this patient, there may be several stakeholders who need to be informed as the case progresses including the referring doctor as well as insurance companies and family members. A generic CRM strategy doesn’t take into account the complexities of managing the patient as well as the patient’s stakeholders. In addition to needing a system for notifying referral sources and stakeholders of admissions, terminations, status changes, plan of care changes, and deaths, home health and hospice businesses need a system for acquiring new patients which is a crucial part of CRM strategies.

For most businesses, retaining customers makes sense because it is less expensive to retain a customer than it is to acquire a new one, but for businesses serving terminally ill patients, patient retention is practically impossible. Acquiring new clients requires a stronger focus on managing referral sources. Hospice and home care marketing professionals value their referral sources and need a tool for maximizing referrals and admissions, with the highest possible margin.

CRM software is such a tool. Off-the-shelf CRM software works well for many traditional businesses looking to manage the sales process from origination to conclusion. However, the unique needs of home health and hospice providers require extensive customization and even then the final product may fall short or require extensive training. A better approach is to use a Customer Relationship Management system designed specifically for the home health and hospice industry.

Like all businesses, return on investment, expense management, productivity, conversion rates, access to information, and ease of use are important CRM system considerations. An ideal CRM tool for the home health and hospice provider should incorporate the following features:

• Automated notification system – Secure, automatic email notifications to referral sources of admissions, terminations, deaths, status changes, changes in plan of care, and so on.

• Alert system - Automated email/alert notification for key data points such as alerting employees involved with a specific referral source when someone else, such as a clinician, in the organization has met with the referral source.

• Automated expense management system – Tracks typical business expenses such as mileage as well as tracks expenses to specific referral sources such as physicians. Tracking of expenses at the individual level as well as at higher levels such as the practice, hospital, and clinic level. This type of tracking allows providers to calculate the return on investment per referral source. For example, a calculation could tell you for every $XX spent, X referrals result.

• Time management system – Tracks how individual sales people spend their time and calculates how many hours it takes to result in a referral.

• Activity and Productivity tracking system – Tracks the day-to-day activities of sales and marketing personnel and details the progression of relationships with referral sources

• Referral source hierarchy – Details admissions and referral counts from referral sources at the physician as well as practice, hospital, county, and organizational level.

• Referral source conversion statistics – Statistics showing conversion rates at all levels from the individual physician to the larger referring organization.

• Referral source ranking – Ranks referral sources based on factors such as past performance, potential for referrals, and quality of referrals. This allows the sales team to focus on high value referral sources.
• Access to information – Includes patient chart lookups for all active and inactive patients as well as patient histories and lists per referral source.

• Robust reporting – Includes ROI and productivity reports, charts, and graphs detailing business development data, expenses, productivity, return on investment, and the entire referral source layout. Exception reports detailing referrals not admitted along with reasons why.

• Document management system – An electronic system for storing expense receipts, medical paperwork, contracts, images, correspondence, and other documents.

• Availability via client/server, laptop, PDA, and Web – A client/server version with offline capabilities, full PDA version for Blackberries and other portable devices, and 100% Web-based access for remote information retrieval and data entry, 24/7.

• Security – User access control and security ensure that only those with access to confidential information can access it.

The home health and hospice industry serves patients while also managing a complex business. Managing customer relationships is crucial to ensuring that the organization has the resources to provide the level of care and compassion patients require. Adopting a CRM strategy and selecting a CRM tool that facilitates that strategy allows businesses to spend their sales and marketing resources on quality referral sources. While your patients may not be repeat customers, your referral sources can repeatedly refer patients to you if you effectively manage your relationship with them. When it comes to referral sources, remember the foundation of CRM: acquisition, service, satisfaction, loyalty, and retention. A Homecare CRM strategy will help you build on this foundation and grow your referral base.

Taking HomecareCRM on the Road

Mon, 12 Jul 2010 19:59:00 GMT

Remember lugging your laptop on appointments to see a referral source? Equipped with a laptop and customer relationship management (CRM) software, you were able to stay connected and work more productively in the field. While laptops have their place, even when using HomecareCRM, laptops can be inconvenient at times and can take forever to boot, especially when you need your information right away. If you’re thinking there’s got to be a simpler way to manage your home health contacts, referrals, histories, and notes -- outside the office -- you’re right! Instead of lugging around a laptop, put your Homecare CRM software on your Blackberry (or other mobile device) and stay connected like never before.

If you already own a Blackberry, you’re well on your way to improved productivity. Rather than powering up your laptop in the car in between calls, simply slip out your Blackberry (or other mobile) device, review your notes from your last visit as well as any outstanding new issues entered by the staff back at the office and visit your referral source armed with information. During your visit, your Blackberry is your lifeline to data. Instead of “let me get back to you when I’m at the office,” the office is literally in the palm of your hands.

Use the device to connect to all of your organization’s HomecareCRM data and gain access to real-time information. For example, as you’re calling on a doctor to thank her for referrals, you can use your Blackberry to find out the current status of the patients that she has sent your way with just a few keystrokes. At the end of the sales call, enter the outcome of your visit, to-do’s, and notes and then schedule your next follow-up visit – all in mere minutes.

The beauty of going mobile with HomecareCRM on your Blackberry is that the data is there if you need it. Refresh your memory before entering your client’s building and then slip the Blackberry in your pocket. Should you need to look up information, you’ll be able to quickly access it using a professional, portable device. There’s no lag time involved and you don’t have to beg your client’s office staff for a way to connect to the Internet. Simply look up the data and relay the information to your client. If you don’t need to access data during the call, that’s fine too. After all, you’ve already reviewed the client’s files and are now confident in the direction of the call. Spend your time connecting with your clients and sowing the seeds for future business.

Laptops have their place and were pivotal in the creation of the mobile office. However, today’s PDAs and smart phones such as the Blackberry are quickly making the laptop obsolete for home care professionals. Why lug around a clunky laptop and waste precious minutes waiting for it to power on when you can have all of your home healthcare customer relationship management information readily accessible on your Blackberry. Stay connected and informed by installing Homecare CRM on your Blackberry device.

Managing Referrals -- A Better Way

Mon, 12 Jul 2010 20:00:00 GMT

The home health care industry relies on referrals from others as part of a larger marketing strategy. In order to receive the highest quality referrals, consider implementing a referral management system. After all, you don’t want to rely on chance alone for referrals. At the heart of any referral management system is a plan. How you power that plan is up to you with choices ranging from paper-based organizational tools to software dedicated to the job.

Referral Management Plans
If you don’t currently have a plan for managing your referral sources, create one ASAP. Begin by identifying your ideal patients. These would be the types of patients that you prefer to care for, perhaps because of your area of specialization; perhaps because of the profit margin. For example, if your agency provides care to hospice patients as well as skilled nursing care and you’ve found that the skilled nursing care patient is more rewarding -- or more profitable -- then the skilled nursing patients are the ones that you’d prefer. While you’re at it, identify the types of referrals that you do NOT want to encourage.

Once you know the types of referrals that you do and do not want, identify the sources of these referral types.

This is a referral plan at its most basic: identify your ideal patient and target the professionals that can refer these patients to you. Though basic, a plan is useless unless properly carried out. When will you call on these referral sources? How will you encourage them to send you referrals? What will you do once a referral is granted? How will you follow up?

As your list of referral sources and referrals grows, relying on sticky notes and trying to remember to say “thank you” are no longer effective. That’s where a customer relationship management tool, such as HomecareCRM, comes into play. Imagine having all of your referral sources in the software and having access to each source’s history, detailed notes, quality of referrals, and overall rating. Now imagine being able to schedule calls, mailings, status updates, and thank you notes so that you never take anyone for granted again. Additionally, imagine being alerted by CRM to your phone when your referral sources refers patients -- HomecareCRM doesn't replace your EMR system but rather links to it.

Because HomecareCRM can integrate many aspects of your business and can be shared throughout your organization, all of the details surrounding a single referral source are linked. For example, let’s say that a physician refers a patient to your agency. Your EMR system can link to your CRM system providing you (and anyone else) with key information the next time you call on that referral, without having to ask your intake coordinator for it. You will know the latest information and will be better informed. As the software prompts you to call the referral with a status report, all of the notes entered by various employees will be at your fingertips.

In summary, a good referral management tool will provide these key benefits:

Creating a premium level of service and awareness to the Referral Source community

Increasing average daily census and revenue, as well as margin per patient for your company by maximizing Referral Source utilization

Getting the most out of internal sales/marketing resources as well as the investments in business development through a good activity and reporting system.

Working More Efficiently with HomecareCRM

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 19:55:00 GMT

The saying “work smarter, not harder” has become a cliché. However, despite its overuse, this saying has reached cliché hood for good reason: it’s extremely relevant. With the economy still struggling to recover, those remaining on the job must do their own jobs as well as pick up many of the duties of their laid off coworkers. If you’re a home health care professional, not only may your workload be heavier due to layoffs, referrals may be down due to the economy. Clearly, you’ve got a lot of work ahead.

This doesn’t mean that you must become an expert multi-tasker. In fact, if you’re accustomed to multitasking, working smarter, not harder may even require that you perform one step at a time. The key to working smarter and not harder is to work efficiently. Customer relationship management (CRM) tools can help you to work more efficiently, and thus, smarter, not harder.

For example, do you call on the same set of doctors every Tuesday because that’s how you’ve always done it? Is this the best use of your time? Sure, you could continue your normal routine and follow your normal routes as you always do. However, by doing so, you are maintaining the status quo and that’s not necessarily going to lead to increased referrals in these tough economic and competitive times.

Using CRM tools, you’ll be better able to identify high value referral sources and holes in your current processes. Review your call histories and look for patterns. For instance, let’s say that you’ve identified a physician who has the potential to refer a large amount of patients to you and that you regularly visit his office every other Tuesday. Now, look at your notes for this particular physician. When you stop by his office, is he available or is he routinely running behind or even out of the office? What if Tuesday is his day for making rounds at the hospital which often puts him behind schedule with little time to spare? Would it make sense to call on him on a less hectic day?

Another key to working smarter is to identify not only the high value referral sources, but the high value people within the referring organization. For example, who is the person in the organization that actually suggests your services to patients? While the physician is certainly a key contact, earning the support and trust of the office staff is equally important. Use your CRM software to manage relationships with the entire office, not just the physician. A personal phone call to an office manager (or another staff member) to thank her for referring a patient to you takes just a few minutes and is likely to be appreciated. A thank you card is also a nice gesture that is sure to be displayed prominently on her desk for a few days.

CRM tools also streamline the follow up process. It’s easy to forget that a physician asked you to call back on Thursday afternoon when he doesn’t have patients scheduled. However, if you immediately schedule a to-do in your CRM software, you’ll be automatically reminded as Thursday afternoon approaches. Take advantage of the time management tools in your CRM software to ensure that you never forget an important task again. Not only will you not forget to do something important, your referral sources and patients will recognize you for being well organized and competent.

CRM software is vital for any professional who must work more efficiently. Use the reports, histories, and time management tools to work smarter, not harder. And consider HomecareCRM as the best CRM tool for home care professionals.

Going to Kansas City - McKesson User Conference

Sun, 26 Apr 2009 12:09:00 GMT

HomecareCRM is exhibiting at the McKesson User Conference held in Kansas City the next couple of days (April 26-27). As a "strategic business partner" of McKesson, we've enjoyed attending this event in the past because we get to meet old friends and make new ones.

At this year's conference we will be showing some new features of HomecareCRM and will be rolling out our newest marketing campaign "Get a grip on your customers with HomecareCRM". If you're attending the conference stop by our booth to see the latest version and also pick up your luggage tag with this campaign written on it. Oh, and did I mention, we will be having a drawing for a 4-day, 3-night Amelia Island Florida getaway along with other prizes?

We'll have a lot more to say in a few days about the conference and we'll announce the winners of the sweepstakes.

Until then, Get a grip on your customers with HomecareCRM!

Welcome to our Blog!

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 20:05:00 GMT

This is our blog post on this website!

Feel free to grab a cup of tea and a cookie, put your feet up and take a look around. You'll find heaps of great content and information about HomecareCRM.

I hope you enjoy and feel free to let us know what you think!