4 New Year’s Resolutions for your Home Care Agency

The end of a year is a great time to reflect on your accomplishments and make improvements to your home care agency. It represents an opportunity to look at the bigger picture and strategize how you can improve your bottom line moving forward into the new year.

While the quality of your service and client outcomes are always a major focus in terms of goal setting, here are a few new year’s resolutions that will help you make a difference in your home care agency in 2016:

Reduce Care Worker Turnover

With the proportion of seniors over 65 steadily increasing into the new year, the need to hire and retain high quality care workers to meet the growing demands has never been higher. As you head into the new year, consider reviewing and taking new approaches to your hiring processes and evaluating the benefits and incentives for working at your agency.

Get Noticed

In order to grow your home care business, it’s imperative to get the word out about your agency to those who need to know about it.  There are a number of marketing methods that you could utilize, but it’s not always easy to determine which mix will have the biggest impact. Consider the following marketing tips to help your agency attract more clients in 2016:

• Raise your voice: Use your experience and knowledge of home care from 2015 to speak about current issues, trends, or best practices at local groups or events in the new year. Write guest blogs or articles for local columns and websites. Build your celebrity and become the local home care expert by discussing ongoing challenges in the industry with the public.
• Use your news: Write press releases announcing any new services, team members, or products, and distribute them to local media outlets and your social media pages. This will stimulate interest in your home care agency and let potential clients know your organization is constantly evolving.
• Educate: If you haven’t already started a blog on your website, 2016 is the time. Posting relevant and insightful content on your website is one of the easiest, cost efficient and most effective ways to market your agency.

Strengthen Customer Service

• Offer training sessions: Exceptional customer service requires an agency-wide effort. Consider offering quarterly training sessions on how to best manage client scenarios politely and courteously in 2016.
• Increase client communication: By incorporating alternative modes of communication, agencies have the opportunity to improve their overall quality of home health care, resulting in better outcomes for all parties involved. Consider implementing family and client portals to help ensure all stakeholders are up-to-date, and to help care workers be better prepared to promptly answer any and all client questions.
• Give care workers the tools they need: AlayaCare provides an impeccable user experience across multiple devices allowing care workers real time access to patient information while working in the field. Care workers are informed on their mobile devices and automatically have access to patients’ location, care plan, ADL tracking, vital signs, and all other essential information needed to ensure clients receive the fastest, most reliable care possible.

Harness the Power of Technology

While there is no question 2015 was a significant year for technology in the home care industry, there are still a number of companies that are lagging behind the times. If your agency is still struggling with digitizing paper-based workflows or dealing with the frustration of an out-of-date software solution, 2016 is the time to upgrade to a platform such as AlayaCare that provides an end-to-end experience that will streamline your workflows and improve efficiencies. If you want to raise the bar even higher this new year, consider getting ahead of the crowd by doing some research into telehealth solutions; this up and coming trend gives remote patients access to the care they need, while also providing numerous benefits to cater the demands of the aging population.

Make your agency the best it can be in 2016

AlayaCare offers an end-to-end home healthcare solution equipped all the tools you need to keep up with evolving industry trends in 2016. If you’re looking to become an industry leader, request a demo today and find out more about how AlayaCare can help you achieve your new year’s resolutions.