What to Do if You Didn’t Qualify for a Best of Home Care Award

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Home Care Office Staff Hiring Tips

Here’s why you may not have qualified—and what you can do to be one of the award winners next year.

Like it the old fashioned way?

If you’re reading this, you probably didn’t qualify for a Best of Home Care award. That’s OK—but we know you can qualify for one next year.

These awards are invaluable in attracting potential clients and caregivers—one Leader in Excellence award winner we spoke to recently said that over 40% of their referrals ask about the Leader in Excellence award when they call.

Here’s why you may not have qualified—and what you can do to be one of the award winners next year.

#1: Maybe your scores weren’t high enough.

For agencies enrolled in our client/caregiver survey program, this is the most common reason. Fortunately, it’s within your control to change. Many agencies that don’t qualify aren’t far off from qualifying. You can start with these tips:

  • Take ownership of negative feedback. While positive feedback is nice to help you know you’re doing some things right, negative feedback is more useful in knowing how to improve. Every item of negative feedback should lead to an action item for one of your team to learn more about the problem and take steps to address it.

  • Get your entire admin team involved in looking over your feedback—but make sure at least one team member is formally assigned and held accountable to reviewing the feedback. Some of the most successful agencies in our program frequently mention that they wouldn’t be able to fully make use of the feedback without the differing perspectives that different team members bring to the table.

  • Consider ways to incentivize your staff (including both office staff and caregivers) to help improve satisfaction scores. We’ve seen agencies achieve considerable success by tying caregiver bonuses to client satisfaction scores, for example. At any rate, it’s always a good practice to pass along positive client feedback to caregivers so that they know when they’re doing a good job.

  • Subscribe to our blog. We frequently publish articles with tips on how to improve different aspects of your business. You might be interested in the Top Ten Complaints from Home Care Clients and the Top Ten Complaints from Caregivers.

#2: Maybe you didn’t get enough surveys or missed another part of the qualification criteria.

You can review award criteria here. Note that with changes we’re making to the survey questions, award criteria for the coming year has been updated.

One common issue that sometimes prevents agencies from qualifying for awards is not having enough client or caregiver surveys. To avoid this problem, make sure you’re doing the following:

  • Sending out inform letters to every new client and caregivers, and to all clients and caregivers at least every six months. These templates are available in VANTAGE.

  • Making sure that your clients and caregivers’ contact information is kept up-to-date in VANTAGE. If you’re using a scheduling software provider that integrates with VANTAGE, make sure that this information is updated in your scheduling software. Otherwise, you can manually update it in VANTAGE. Someone on your team should be assigned to make sure that contact information in VANTAGE is updated regularly.

  • Reviewing any clients that you have set to Do Not Contact. If more than 15% of your clients are set to Do Not Contact, you will be ineligible for awards.

#3: Maybe you’re not signed up for our client/caregiver survey program yet.

If you’re not collecting satisfaction feedback from your clients and caregivers yet but you’re interested in qualifying for Best of Home Care awards, visit our Solutions pages or request a free demo to learn what the next steps are.

We’re Here to Help

If you have any other questions regarding qualifying for Best of Home Care awards, you can reach out to your Customer Success Manager here at Home Care Pulse or let us know in the comments below.

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