Cathy Cress

Expert in Aging Life and Geriatric Care Management

Marketing Aging Life or Geriatric Care Management- Reach Your Old Target Markets Pronto

PDF-Cover-of-11-10-12My-Geriatric-Care-Management-Agency.jpg

 

Adding Aging life or Geriatric Care Management to Private duty Home care or a Non-profit means the population you serve has changed. That means a new marketing strategy for your new product line.

 

You are now targeting aging families who need a full service concierge that meets the needs of the whole family in order to serve the client. If what you do now is provide home care or serve the underserved – this is a distinctly different product – a tray full of gourmet food, not one dish.

 

I worked with a large non-profit with a storied reputation who served the needy. They still had a whole cadre of elder law attorneys who referred. When they had added geriatric care management 2 years before and none of the attorneys really knew the change had been made and were making the wrong referrals.  Don’t let that opportunity slip through your fingers or your bottom line. Send your new geriatric care managers to all these contacts to explain and market the new product.

 

 

 

So you must contact your primary and most profitable referral sources, elder law attorneys, trust departments, concerning physicians, VIP hospitals and explain your new profuse. If these are not your targets – add them fast.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How Can Existing Non-Profit Staff Buy In to For Profit GCM?

PDF-Cover-of-11-10-12My-Geriatric-Care-Management-Agency.jpg

 

Existing non- profit staff can be fee phobic. As adding a for profit arm, often goes against the mission to serve the needy and poor, they often find this new service a shocking decision and can push back and sabotage.

Non- profits who add geriatric care management as a for profit revenue stream can benefit from workshops dealing with staff feelings about the new for profit service and their for profit geriatric care management staff.

A staff retreat or workshop should cover the reasons for adding for profit geriatric care management. These workshops should address non Profit funding mechanisms and deficits in that funding like diminished government grants, decreased donor support.

The sessions can teach the value that geriatric care management to the non-profit bottom line to can help reluctant staff have a buy in. Showing staff how the addition of a for profit service will protect their own programs will help staff really buy into the new program.

 Hiring an outside facilitator can help. Allowing staff members to articulate their objections and do role-playing can helped them feel more comfortable with fee for service geriatric care management. Doing this before geriatric care management begins can make it easier for  staff accept and work with the new program and avoid staff sabotage

 

Fee Phobia Roots in GCM- Former Salaried Positions

PDF-Cover-of-11-10-12My-Geriatric-Care-Management-Agency.jpg

 

 

Charging a reasonable fee for human services is wrenching for many people in the helping profession. Geriatric care manager are typical examples. They often under value the expertise and commitment they bring to their profession. GCM’s have years of training in their field, just like lawyers and physicians, but since this is a social service they feel many times that their high level of skill is not as “ billable” as physicians and attorneys. In fact they have an ethical dilemma about billing.  Private geriatric care managers set their hourly fee too low and often non-profit agency geriatric care managers are alarmed at the hourly fee established by the non- profit sponsoring agency.

 

There are multiple roots to this “fee phobia”. One origin can grow from previous salaried non-profit and government positions. Case managers have been paid a salary and are unaware of the many costs associated with running a business –for profit or non-profit.  The charge for hourly geriatric care management looks large but that hourly fee salary includes all the costs of doing business.

When non profits want to add geriatric care managers they must heavily screen applicants who have other non-profit backgrounds looking at for their willingness to bill, understanding of billing and deeply rooted values that allow them to bill clients for their very valuable services. They also should be understood the actual overhead built into to a billing rate.

 

 

 

 

 

Non Profit Staff Opposition to For Profit Geriatric Care Management

PDF-Cover-of-11-10-12My-Geriatric-Care-Management-Agency.jpg

 

Although there are clinical and fiscal and operational reasons to collect fees, there has been real resistance within Non-Profits to add For Profit Program like Geriatric Care Management. This opposition has come from all groups: staff, volunteers, administrators, and clients, who have been receiving free services for many years.

Many publicly funded human service providers in the Non-Profit sector appear to suffer from a type of “fee phobia.” Why?

Many health professionals like nurses and social workers are trained and believe that social services should be free to clients.  They fear their clients would not pay or would refuse help if they were charged. Non-profit professionals are inexperienced in setting rates and did not feel confident about negotiating fees. The biggest push back to the idea of “selling” services, stating that they did not choose to become a social worker (or nurse or other human services professional) to work as a “salesperson.”

How is this overcome? Most Non –Profit hire a new geriatric care management staff that are not fee phobic, are comfortable with billing , billing technology and are comfortable with the idea of selling services. Plus they understand that geriatric care management brings a wealthier client who can afford and will accept being charged for social services.They further believe that their services and time are worthy of billing clients.

 

Contact

Use the form on the
Contact page to email Cathy.

Email

Connect with Cathy

Get Cathy’s “10 Critical Success Steps to a Profitable Aging Life or GCM Business”