I was at the Michigan Chapter of the National Speakers Association meeting last week. The presenter was Colin Sprake who spoke about growing your business for professional speakers. There were several key points worth sharing.

So many hospitals I work with have greater length of stay for those patients where a hospice referral was made. Here are some actual dates from a hospital in the southeast that mirrors other hospitals.

This hospital made 201 hospice referrals during a 12 month period. The LOS on these hospice referrals was 13.3 days, ouch! The hospital’s overall LOS is 4.9 days. Why the big difference? A few thoughts are below along with some possible measure on how to lower that LOS.

Billable hours are the economic engine that drive Personal Care Home Health (Private Duty) companies. I know this well, because I actually own a Personal Care Home Health Company called Homewatch CareGivers, www.thehomecareexpert.com and my challenge over the years has been understanding how best to drive billable hours.

My initial efforts started with a traditional sales model. I had three sales people working the segments of Geriatric Case Managers, ElderLaw Attorneys, Assist Living Communities and the well. Maybe I didn’t have the right people and/or I didn’t do a good job with training, but the results were poor.

The 1st QTR of 2015 flew by! I hate to say it, but planning for 2016 will be here soon. So how was your growth performance for the 1st Quarter? Did you meet your organization’s referral, admission and ADC growth goals? Does your organization even have growth goals? There are many that don’t- and without establishing goals, an organizations growth cannot be measured.

How strong is your core? Having a strong core of Nurse Case Managers is key to growth and success. And having a consistent regular team of Case Managers is fundamental to providing quality services and a set of referral sources who trust your hospice. So how do you strengthen your core?

Recently I have heard some whispering around pay per visit for hospice visits. This is mostly coming from organizations that have a skilled home care business where pay for visit is an option. As you might imagine, this is causing quite a rise in eyebrows in the hospice community. What are your thoughts?

Turbo-Charge your referral development, sales and networking abilities by using LinkedIn. This post will give you 10 practical and useful tips on how to use LinkedIn to make you professionally and personally more successful……Guaranteed!!!

There has been a great deal of dialogue about whether it is ethical or not to pay bonuses to home care and hospice sales people for referral and admission growth. The National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization came out with a statement that said they believe it is not ethical. Some larger consulting firm also hold this view? What do you think?? I happen to disagree with this thinking.