Two of the 2017 Home Care and Hospice Conference and Expo pre-conferences offered attendees a deeper look into what it takes to run a successful business in home care and hospice, and the secrets to attracting and retaining quality caregivers.

How to Succeed When You’re New-ish in the Business focused on the need for succession planning and how to cultivate new leaders. With so many Baby Boomers retiring, opportunities exist for a new generation of home care and hospice leaders. It’s important for current leadership to mine and cultivate emerging leaders from the clinical side and elsewhere to ensure business longevity and success.

Participants learned about regulatory, compliance, and billing management tools to help effectively manage day-to-day operations. For example, some of those who are new to home care and hospice may not know how to navigate Home Health Conditions of Participation (HHCoPs), what QAPI is (or any of the other acronyms in health care), or the importance of ratings and patient satisfaction scores.

By the end of this session, participants learned the value of mentoring those in other generations, including Millennials and Gen-Xers, and how to develop a thorough succession plan. It was led by Marcylle Combs and others, including Samantha McKay, and Brenda Beggs. Continuing education credits were available.

Key Strategies to Develop your Private Pay Organization was led by Stephen Tweed, health care strategist and author of Conquering the Crisis: Proven Solutions for Caregiver Recruiting and Retention. Attendees learned about The Seven Step Caregiver Solution System that helps attract and retain qualified staff so they can grow their business. NAHC Executive Vice President Andrea Devoti said, “Stephen’s book is an accurate reflection of the difficulties faced in finding and keeping qualified caregivers. As someone who ran a home care agency for nearly two decades, I find his advice to be invaluable.”

It’s hard to deliver quality care to patients and their families when an organization doesn’t have the staff when there’s a high rate of employee turnover, a lack of engagement, when morale is low, or when current staff is overworked. By learning how to attract and retain the best people, a home care or hospice agency can set itself up for success for years to come. The last half hour of this session was a panel discussion on private duty home care.

Join us next October in Dallas at the Gaylord Grapevine on October 7-9, 2018, for more exceptional education sessions like these!