COVID-19 Safety Archives ⋆ Cathy Cress

Is Your Business Marketing Plan 4 Updated With Omicron Scourge ?

January 14, 2022

Do You Have a Care Management or Home Care Marketing Plan For the Omicron Explosion?

How do you successfully market the safety of your care management or home care business during the 2022 Omicron worldwide surge? How can you overcome customers’ hesitation to use your agency when Omicron still wildly spikes, variants may be around the corner, most Americans are predicted to get Omicron as Omicron/ COVID surge all over the world

DURING OMICRON SURGE DID YOU EDIT YOUR MARKETING PLAN?

During the Omicron explosion, your audience is everyone who wants to know that it is safe to use your services. So, how are you going to add that to your marketing plan? Will you have clearly defined COVID -safe policies on the front page of your website like Lifespan, a geriatric care management agency in Santa Cruz, Ca?

Will you use videos of your staff to show your agency’s commitment to COVID safety? How will you adjust your marketing plan during the omicron explosion to make clients choose you over the competition in your area?

During this worldwide omicron infestation, will you add a new COVID -19 Coaching service to help local and long-distance families understand how to keep their elders safe from COVID while sheltering in place, recovering from COVID at home, or going into the hospital and recovering after hospitalization?

According to the CDC, more data are needed to know if Omicron infections, and especially reinfections and breakthrough infections in people who are fully vaccinated, cause more severe illness or death than infection with other variants. So spreading your agency safety policy through social media, your newsletter, your website, and talking to clients is critical and it needs to go into the revision of your marketing plan ASAP.

Subscribe to my YouTube channel, Geriatric Care Management and find Webinars on COVID Safety

Omicron Gone Nuclear-Are you Marketing Your Agencies COVID-19 Safety ?

January 3, 2022

How Do You Market the Safety Of Your Agency with Omicron Cases Exploding Nationally?

What is the best way to show the Covid -19 safety protocols of your GCM or homecare agency with new Omicron surge exploding COVID cases once again? You must overcome adult children’s hesitation to use homecare and GCM services. Why hesitation? Although about 62% of all Americans are now vaccinated -while— more than 87 percent of adults 65 and older — have been fully vaccinated, yet terrifying the public and adult children who care for aging loved one’s needing care at home —as COVID exploding again with the highly contagious omicron variant accounting for an estimated 58.6% of sequenced U.S. virus cases in the week ending Dec. 25, as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Nowcast model showed, was up from an estimated 22.5% a week earlier ., 22% self identify as anti-vaxers, So aging families remain very nervous about your agency coming into a senior home.

During this new COVID-19 Omicron surge what families look for in your agency is your Covid 19 safety of staff- the care providers, care managers, and office staff’s vaccination rate, your safety protocols, PPE equipment use, and evidence that you work with your local department of health, state and CDC to stay compliant.

DO YOU CREATE A COVID -19 SAFETY MARKETING PLAN?

Hygienic shield offering COVID-19 Saftey from omicron

A key element that goes into that marketing plan would be an e-newsletter, with a marketing campaign on your covid-19 safety sent out in formats like Constant Contact Survey Monkey other choices

This will boost the clients you can serve, as the Omicron surge has made adult children and elderly clients are nervous to have visitors come to their homes, exposing elders

States and individual health systems have historically addressed vaccination requirements for diseases such as influenza and hepatitis B. You must follow your state’s COVID regulations. Today, more than 2,500 hospitals, or 40 percent of all U.S. hospitals, have announced COVID vaccination requirements for their workforce. They span all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. Potential clients need to know your care staff and care managers you use are incentivized to get vaccinated.

newsletter to market COVID -19 safety

Other Ideas to Add to your e-newsletter about COVID

Warning about Omincron surge

Include Videos in your e-newsletter like this terrific e-newsletter that Lifespan, a care management agency in Santa Cruz, Ca. uses introducing their staff products and services during COVID.

Tell a story with the COVID safety you want to show future clients and their adult children
Use your i phone to record your video
marketing Covid -19 safety of your agency
If you are a care manager, include a list of great reasons that a client or customer should work with an ALCA or Geriatric Care Manager during the Coronavirus pandemic. ALCA members get this in a flyer “Why Work With An ALCA Member During A Crisis “.The Aging Life Care Association has huge resources for dealing with coronavirus impact on geriatric care management. This makes joining ALCA now a great idea in this lethal pandemic and its deadly effect.
- - 5 steps to create an e-newsletter with the right copy, to get out the word about you
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Do You Use Videos in Marketing Your Staff Safety With New Delta Variant?

September 2, 2021

Will you use videos to show your agency’s commitment to COVID safety with the new highly transmissible Delta variant ? Online video content continues explode in growth and according to a 2020 study. 84% of people say that they’ve been convinced to buy a product or service by watching a brand’s video.

Video can be a tool to add to your home care or geriatric care management marketing plan to show the extreme safety protocols your GCM or homecare agency during the Delta variant Explosion of COVID19 to overcome adult children’s hesitation to use homecare and GCM services.

Why hesitation?

Older people still account for most Covid-19 deaths, and in many counties in the US, especially in the South and Mountain West, seniors without full vaccination make up more than 10 percent of the total population.

Even though the majority of seniors have been vaccinated, they now need a booster shot to prevent breakthrough infection from the Delta variant. This will only surge as the coming fall & winter makes everyone stay in the more risky indoors

So aging families remain very nervous about your agency coming into a senior home.

What families look for in your agency is assurance of your staff’s safety- the care providers, care managers, and office staff’s vaccination rate, your safety protocols, PPE equipment use, and evidence that you work with your local department of health, state and CDC to stay compliant.

As US clients are using services like care managers and home care again, it is critical that you build that trust by showing customers you are totally CDC safe. It is also important that you position your agency ahead of your local competition and that can be achieved through video. That can be achieved through using video video when your competition does not.

Videos are the new powerful Marketing Tool

Show your community your agency’s excellent safety through videos, done with a phone by a talented staff member. Take the example of Lifespan a 35-year-old geriatric care management home care agency that provides Quality of Life activities and adds videos about Lifespan‘s Well Being Program. They upload them to their YouTube channel another great way they build trust with their agency. Market safety from Covid-19.

Videos are not hard to make

You just need a smartphone tripod and a person to do the videoing. I have a YouTube Channel on Geriatric Care Management for years. I made most of them with an I phone.

However , I have gotten much more sophisticated and now two a videographers . An excellent one is Tapfilms , also used by Lifespan. A second is

East Coast Studios that does all my on-line classes in geriatric care management.

If you belong to the Aging Life Care Asso ( ALCA) use their excellent video marketing resources

What is President Biden’s New Infrastructre Caregiver Plan?

April 14, 2021

President Biden announced the American Jobs Plan, a $2 trillion investment in infrastructure, jobs, and home care. It includes a $400 billion investment to expand access to Medicaid home and community-based services (HCBS)

Why This Plan for Home-Based Care?

Only 15% of U.S. seniors 80 or older receive care at home. In Switzerland, Denmark, Mexico, and Sweden, that figure is above 30%, with numbers even higher in Israel and Lithuania.

Medicaid has slowly evolved over the years, placing a greater emphasis on home- and community-based services. But the ground gained has been relatively minor compared to investments in other settings like nursing homes.

In 1995, Medicaid spent about 18 cents out of every long-term care dollar on HCBS services. Today, that number has reached 57 cents per dollar.

The Scale of the Problem is Mamouth

The number of seniors is projected to grow by more than 40 million, approximately

doubling, by 2050, while the population older than 85 will nearly triple. Unlike most other industrialized nations, the United States does not provide a public long-term-care benefit for all older adults.

Only10-15% of Americans can Afford Private Duty Homecare

Because Medicare does not pay for home care, only the top 10-15 % can afford private duty home care, while in many other nations it is a right and free to all through the government. What Biden’s new plan does is take a giant step in making home care possible a greater number of Americans.

The plan calls for expanding access to and quality of HCBS to help more older adults and people with disabilities live in the community and extending the Money Follows the Person program to help individuals who are in nursing facilities and other institutions return to the community.

What The Pandemic Has taught us about Aging and Dying

at Home

What the continuing pandemic has painfully taught us is when we are ill- we want to be home in the arms of our family. When we are threatened with or facing death, we do not want want to be in a sterile hospital with only anonymous caring nurses and zoom to comfort us in our last minutes in this world. We want to be at home- in the arms of our family and loving caregivers.

Long before the COVID-19 emergency, health care policy experts have increasingly recognized the value of home-based health care. A recent AARP survey found that three in four adults 50 years and older would prefer to age in their homes and communities. And a growing body of evidence suggests it is less expensive to deliver care in the home.

Indeed, for years we’ve seen hospitalized patients more quickly returning to their homes and communities to heal and recover safely, reducing costs for themselves and the health care system.

The Plague of Isolation on top of the Plague of COVID -in Locked Down Nursing Homes

Home-based care addresses negative health effects of social isolation and loneliness, which drive poorer health outcomes that annually cost billions of excess health care dollars.

Isolation is also equal to 15 cigarettes each day. Elders in a nursing home during the pandemic were isolated from the families and their fellow residents so much so that despair may have led to the 174000 deaths as of March 2021.

So Biden has launched a bill the builds the infrastructure of home care for the lower 30% on Medicaid until in America’s future, Medicare and home care for all is reached.

GCM Agency Lifespan Wins Top Awards

April 11, 2021

Geriatric Care Management Home Care Agency Wins National Award

Lifespan a 35-year-old geriatric care agency in Santa Cruz, California won prestigious awards from both national and local groups this month. Home Care Pulse awarded the care management home care agency ” Provider of Choice Award” for being best in class for rendering quality care to their clients, being trustworthy, and providing outstanding home care services the award was based on customer and staff surveys. Locally they also won the Santa Cruz Good Times Award for “Best of Homecare “award while competing with all home care agencies in their county.

Lifespan helped build trust during the “annus horibillus ” year of COVID through their own website.Clients could see their extreme COVID safety precautions prominently provided on the navigation bar of their website.

Outstanding Home Care in the year of COVID

The award recognized their outstanding home care services providing quality care through impeccably trained COVID safety-equipped and monitored home care staffing during the pandemic, building community trust. Clients in Santa Cruz, California needing care management services during COVID and ongoing were provided geriatric care management services developed over the agencies 35-year history and fine-tuned for clients’ needs during the epidemic

Quality of Life as Well as Quality of Care

The agency continued to offer Well Being – a service for lonely and isolated seniors who dramatically suffered during the pandemic from sheltering in place. Lifespan not only served the quality of care needs of clients but also the Quality of Life Needs answering isolation and loneliness in a pandemic

Videos Showing Home Care Safety Build Trust

Finally, they showed the community their excellence and safety through videos in their email newsletters for 6 months, done with a phone by a talented staff member. The agency provides Quality of Life activities and adds videos about Lifespan‘s Well Being Program. They upload them to their YouTube channel another great way they build trust with their agency. Market safety from Covid-19.

During the continuing but diminishing pandemic, as clients begin to use services like care managers and home care again, it is critical that you build that trust by showing customers you are safe. In Lifespan’s case, you can also win awards for this.

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