How to Get Clients for Home Health Care: A Proactive Approach for Referrals

Referrals offer a great avenue for how to get clients for home health care. A proactive approach to home health care referrals will provide your home care agency with a stream of referrals that keeps on flowing. Referrals can come from many places like the these:

·   Past clients

·   Current clients

·   Government funders

·   Community partners

Networking and relationship building are productive ways to get referrals to keep your home care agency growing. Requests for proposals will help you acquire more referrals from the government. Your good name and reputation are key ingredients to getting referrals from current clients. Home health marketing strategies will take all these referral efforts to the next level.

How to Be Viewed as a Quality Elder Care Referral Agency

As a home care agency, you work hard to earn your reputation as a quality in-home caregiving service. While many people are able to pay for their services privately, many others rely on a separate funding source to pay for their care. Third-party payors often require high standards in caregiving before they’ll agree to a contract.

One way to add to your credibility as a quality home care agency is to use your digital marketing strategy to showcase the quality of your services. Your web pages and blog serve as good resources for educating funders and others about your certifications and other quality assurance documentation.

Home Health Care Referrals Stem from Client Satisfaction

Good or bad, it’s always helpful to get feedback. Third-party payors listen to the feedback from their clients because they’re looking for assurance that their money was well-spent. Good feedback encourages them to keep sending clients your way, while negative comments will have them second-guessing whether referrals should go to you or someone else.  

To keep those referrals coming in, take stock of the types of issues home care clients complain about:

·   Caregivers are late.

·   Caregivers don’t show up.

·   The agency didn’t provide a substitute when needed.

·   Poor fit between caregiver and client.

Online surveys are a great way to gather feedback about your services. When it’s good, you can use it to share statistics that prove client satisfaction and bill yourself as a leading elder care referral agency.

Use Feedback to Improve Service and Ensure Client Satisfaction

Do you really know how your clients feel about your home care agency? You can’t know for sure unless you ask them.

It’s easy to believe that everything is fine when you don’t get wind of problems or complaints. The reality is that people have their own reasons for not bringing up issues that annoy or frustrate them. Unfortunately, that leaves you in the dark, and it can prevent you from getting valuable referrals. Feedback will keep you on your toes and ensure that the quality of your services is good and that will set you up to be a valued senior referral agency.

Happy Clients Lead to Home Health Care Referrals

In your years of home care service, you’ve surely had some memorable clients that raved about the quality of your services. These are the types of people that are happy to tell others about the great experience they’ve had with your agency—if they only knew who to tell. They also probably don’t know the value that a strong testimony could bring to your home care agency in the way of referrals. 

When you reach out to these special clients, their testimonies can become an important part of home care marketing strategies for building your business through referrals.

Caregiver Retention Is Essential for In-Home Care for the Elderly Referrals

Part of your home care agency’s reputation depends on employing your caregivers for long periods of time. Staffing is a big problem for many home care agencies. When prospects or funders see that many of your caregivers have worked with your agency for many years, it tells them that you value an environment where caregivers are as happy as your clients. Caregiver retention is an indicator that clients trust your agency and that gives you high marks for quality of care. High marks will net you lots of quality home health care referrals.

Keep Making Strides of Improvement as a Senior Care Referral Agency

Try as you may, things don’t always go as you anticipate. Due to the personal nature of home care, the environment can be highly unpredictable. Clients and payors alike understand that things can happen that are out of your control. While they don’t expect perfection, it’s reasonable for them to expect you to continue making improvements in the quality of care.

When the quality of care comes into question, documenting your workflows is a good way to demonstrate how things should flow under normal circumstances in home care for the elderly. For example, it’s reasonable to predict the length of appointments based on the history of clients with certain conditions.

Being able to demonstrate caregiver efficiency is a data-driven way of how to market your home care business.

Send Out Cards for Referrals Requests

After your clients have received services is an opportune time to ask referrals. If clients were satisfied with your services, they’ll be happy to tell others. An effective strategy that some home agencies like to use is to send out a referral card every few months offering a discount on services for former clients that refer a friend.

Seek Out Referral Resources Within Your Community

Your home care agency is a vital part of your community. Other businesses often get requests for recommendations for home care services. By networking with them, you will get the benefit of a stream of referrals.

Here’s a list of some organizations that refer individuals for home care:

·   Physicians

·   Churches

·   Senior centers

·   Food pantries

·   Community centers

Social Media Is an Effective Online Marketing Tool

Seniors and their family members are active on social media sites. Posting on your sites is free, and you have the option of buying paid ads as well. Interesting posts grab attention and people that like or follow your posts often share them with others. Social media posts are an effective way to build your brand.

Relationships Drive Strategies for Increasing Referrals

It’s not that difficult to form a plan for how to get clients for home health care when you give it the time that it demands. Referrals can be your lifeline, especially when times are slow. New clients trust your referral sources and that forms the beginning of a trusting relationship with your home care agency.

The main goal of your agency is to provide excellent care and provide a good home health care environment for your caregivers, as well as your clients.

Quality home care leads to client satisfaction, and that leads to an increase in referrals. When you combine your referral sources with a strong digital marketing plan, you have a winning combination.

A professional digital marketer has the knowledge and expertise to elevate your home care agency’s brand and increase referrals.

Call SeniorCareClicks to learn more at (954) 401-9058 or contact us today!