No matter how you define the business of Long Term Care (LTC) it will always come down to revenue flow, resident care and performance at the local facility level.
Every LTC business regardless of size is dependent on the local community where facilities operate to endorse and support its success.
Local facility marketing programs help encourage potential resident preference and motivate qualified employee consideration. An important component to success is creating community partners that provide third-party endorsements of a facility’s leadership, quality of life and care giving services.
Building community support can take many forms such as creating a newspaper article called Silver Wisdom where residents share short stories. Perhaps homespun sayings of wit can be made into fortune cookies called Wise Cookies and distributed at Sunday Schools, etc. These efforts could coincide with a series of Live Wise days at local merchants for free health checks. Residents’ experiences can also contribute to developing a cook book with a grocery store where proceeds can help fund a facility program. Equally important to a facility’s reputation is a local web site to highlight community and lifestyle with quotes from residents, their families, employees and others.
The key to a successful local marketing program is creativity, flexibility, consistent effort and leadership networking. In a book titled: Marketing Senior Housing, 15 critical components to success authored by Phyllis M. Thornton it is pointed out that “a well-designed and consistently intense networking program will outperform advertising in its ability to generate leads and sales.”
The Point: Long Term Care corporate business success is dependant on every facility’s ability to create revenue, goodwill, resident appreciation, recruit and retain qualified employees by generating support from the communities they serve.
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