Promote Senior Independence through Print Media

Reaching an advanced age is indeed a blessing, but it comes with a long list of uncertainties. Atop that list is how to maintain an independent lifestyle. Home health and hospice provide seniors with care options that can extend their independence. TAG Partners provides home health and hospice agencies the print media to inform patients of care services, benefits, eligibility and the admission process.

TAG can help your agency capitalize on the amenity of home care in this age of convenience. Electronic media outlets tout online shopping for just about everything these days. Local grocery stores and restaurants are now promoting their home delivery services. In much the same way home health and hospice agencies need to promote the benefits of bringing health care to the patient.

The question is how to go about reaching your target market without breaking the bank. Television, radio, and digital advertising are broad and oftentimes expensive marketing mediums. Building referrals on a budget starts with defining your customers. For example, a large percentage of potential home health and hospice patients are seniors who spend a lot of time in physician and care center waiting areas. Maintaining a presence through print media in those waiting areas is a cost-effective way to reach a high concentration of potential clients. Targeted print media is an affordable marketing strategy for home health and hospice care.    

Call on potential referral sources such as surgeons, orthopedic specialists, cardiologists, oncologists, pulmonary therapists, and provide disease specific patient educational brochures. We have a wide variety disease information brochures and health care flyers all customizable with your agency’s branding.

Highlight the specialized care your agency provides. Many older adults may not be aware that home health and hospice care is covered under Medicare once eligibility has been met. Our informative home health care and hospice marketing brochures explain care services, practices, and payment options all while promoting your agency.

Visit tagwebstore.com for your home health, private duty, and hospice print media. Don’t see what you need online? Call us at 866-232-6477 x 2018. We have been providing home care marketing tools for years. Let us help you design custom admission books, marketing booklets, brochures, or flyers. We have a full-service print shop and graphics department at your disposal.

Recognizing Family Caregivers

November is National Family Caregivers Month. Make a commitment to honor the loving people who dedicate countless hours and resources caring for a chronically or terminally ill relative.

It’s not unheard of for a family member to care for an invalid loved one at home, but these days family caregivers are being asked to shoulder immense responsibilities while balancing work and home obligations. These caregivers are often unprepared to manage the complex nursing required for someone suffering with a serious chronic condition. The physical and emotional demands of long-term caregiving can lead to anxiety, depression, compromised health, and financial hardship. .

Home Health, Private Duty, and Hospice provide services that can assist family caregivers. Many of these services are eligible for Medicare and private insurance coverage with physician referral. Be sure your marketing resources inform families about the in-home services available to help with: skilled nursing, symptom management, pain management, nutritional support, wound care, diabetic care, IV therapy, respite care, companionship and homemaking services.

Here are some promotional ideas:

• Call on Human Resource agencies in your service area about promoting your care services on their employee portals. Explain how your agency can help caregivers achieve better work-home balance. Ask them to link to your website for detailed information and a one-on-one assessment. 

• Sponsor a family caregiver event in your community. Discuss long-term planning, care options, and home care services. Invite financial planners, lawyers, social workers, and the full spectrum of home health and private duty providers to speak.

• Family caregivers usually accompany their loved ones to doctor visits so be sure to provide your referring physicians with information about your respite care services.

• Add a link to the Caregiver Action Network’s Family Caregiver Story Project on your website to show your commitment to helping caregivers find the resources they need. Visitors can read about the experiences of other family caregivers and find condition specific information to help them in their care giving role.

Visit the TAG Web Store for all your Home Health, Private Duty, and Hospice marketing materials.

National Home Care and Hospice Month coming up in November…

We would all prefer to age gracefully in the comfort of our homes. Many adults are turning to home health, palliative, and hospice care in order to make that a reality. These health services are now a leading choice of care among the disabled, and the chronically and terminally ill.

This November honor your staff for the work they do in caring for those who can longer care for themselves. Promote the fact that your patients receive personalized health care in the privacy and comfort of their own homes. A typical Home Health Team consists of: Registered Nurses, Licensed Vocational Nurses, Physical Therapist, Occupational Therapists, and Speech-Language Pathologist.

Educate patients and their families about hospice and the physical, mental and spiritual support it provides those families facing a terminal prognosis. Let them know that choosing hospice is not giving up, but rather a decision to focus on pain and symptom management. It is surrounding yourself and your family with a care team that specializes in helping terminally ill patients enjoy the best quality of life they can in the time they have left. A typical Hospice Care Team consists of: Medical Director, Registered Nurses, Nurses’ Aides, Social Workers, Hospice Chaplains, and Trained Volunteers.

Celebrate the dedicated care givers in your agency who work together to minimize anxiety and discomfort for those facing a life-limiting illness, and enable patients to face the end of their lives peacefully in the comfort of their own home.

“It is highly appropriate in November that we celebrate the nurses, therapists, aides, and other providers who choose to use their lives to serve our country’s aged, disabled, and dying. No work is nobler, and no group is more deserving of our respect and admiration.”  – Val J. Halamandaris, former NAHC President

  Ways you can Highlight your Agency and the Services you Provide:

• This November, honor physicians who understand and support the work you do for their patients through your social media posts.

• Educate physicians and patients about palliative care and how it can assist those recovering from a serious illness.

• Distribute FAQ brochures to all the libraries and coffee shops in your area. Be sure to leave them at community counters wherever possible.

• Make the lives of your patients and their family caregivers easier by giving them a clear guide that shows them when their symptoms require a call to emergency services, to their home health nurse, or require no action at all. Zone flyers make this simple and are personalized to your agency.

• Set up a booth at community events this month and distribute agency materials, including disease information brochures personalized to your agency. These brochures educate about specific conditions and tell how home health, private duty or hospice care can help.

 Visit www.tagwebstore.com for all your Home Health, Private Duty, and Hospice Marketing essentials.

Boost agency awareness with diabetes education

Make diabetes education a priority this November. Not only is it American Diabetes Month and Diabetic Eye Disease Month, but World Diabetes Day is Nov. 14.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, diabetes affects about 25.8 million Americans. Of those, about 7 million are undiagnosed. Even more shocking is the fact that about 79 million American adults have prediabetes — that’s 35 percent of adults age 20 and older! If the current trends continue, the CDC estimates that one-third of all American adults could have the disease by 2050.

And the illness is no laughing matter. Diabetes is a condition in which your blood sugar is too high because your body either doesn’t make enough insulin to help the sugar get into your body’s cells or can’t use the hormone as well as it should. It increases a person’s risk of stroke, blindness, kidney failure, heart disease and leg and foot amputations.

Such a serious and widespread health problem deserves your agency’s attention.

• Start with a visit to the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases’ education website. There you’ll find tons of free posters, fact sheets, videos and other useful materials.
• Partner with a local optometrist and spread the word about the importance of regular eye exams to help make an early diabetes diagnosis. Optometrists can detect whether unexplained blurry vision or changes in prescriptions may be caused by narrowed blood vessels. Jointly host a discussion at a local senior center about this important issue. Be sure to take the doctor and the facility director to a healthy lunch afterward.
• Volunteer to teach a diet and nutrition class in a local ALF with your favorite activity director. Tout the benefits of a healthy lifestyle in the prevention of diabetes. Bring along healthy snack alternatives to add to the discussion and promise a follow-up class on sensory changes as we age. Call 866-232-6477 for individual component pricing.
• Post an item on your municipal government’s meeting agenda seeking to proclaim November as American Diabetes Month in your community. Be sure to sign up to speak during the agenda item’s reading or during the public comment portion of the meeting. View this sample proclamation for reference as you create your own.
• Visit all the general practitioner offices in your market and educate them about your agency’s efforts in caring for diabetic patients. Leave behind disease-specific flyers or brochures.
• Donate current diabetes books to your local library and insert a bookplate identifying your agency’s donation.
• Give diabetic patients helpful tools to manage and monitor their condition. Zone flyers are an easy way to let them know whether their symptoms are normal, warrant a call to your agency, or are an emergency. Glucose logs help patients keep a clear record of their blood glucose levels and important screenings.

Show the Sandwich Generation how you can help

All across the country, adults expend their time, energy, money and love caring for their children or grandchildren while also caring for their own parents. This group, known as the Sandwich Generation, takes caregiving to new heights.

July is Sandwich Generation Month, an observance initiated by the Sandwich Generation Resource Group. Make a point to reach out to members of this group and show them how home care can help ease their caregiving responsibilities, allowing them to enjoy more of the time they spend with their children and aging parents.

Here are some ideas to get started:

• Host a family day at a local museum, zoo or park. Encourage your clients’ caregivers and their families to attend.
• Partner with non-competing providers and host a large multigenerational family picnic for your community. Have snacks, music and fun activities for people of all ages. Be sure to have plenty of agency brochures and flyers available to educate about how home care can help with a family’s caregiving duties.
• Create a flyer about the Sandwich Generation and include tips to help these caregivers manage their many duties — don’t forget your agency’s contact information. Leave them in the waiting rooms of your community’s general practitioners. Find great articles with relevant information here, here, here and here.
• Contact a local television news station and pitch a story about the Sandwich Generation. Tell them about a client’s family that is doing it all — adults caring for children and aging parents while maintaining full-time jobs. Offer yourself as an expert resource on how to cope with the situation and the kind of help available for members of the Sandwich Generation.
• Partner with a financial planner and elder law specialist and host a workshop at a senior center or place of worship on planning ahead to protect a parent’s assets. Topics can include estate planning, long-term care options, Medicare and advance directives. Focus your agency’s presentation on ways to make caregiving easier, including how home care can help.