Archive for October, 2009

I never knew about this before, and I think it's important that you meet a new friend of mine, Kari Gray, one of the owners of 1st Choice Funding.

They have a unique service.

They loan money to people who are having trouble paying for home care, assisted living, nursing home care,and adult day care.

In fact, this could be a huge benefit to you and some of your clients.

-For instance, what if a client is waiting for their long-term care insurance benefits to kick in, and they need cash flow to bridge that gap between now and then?

-What if your client was having trouble getting a claim paid, and needed cash flow until the problem was resolved?

-What if your client is waiting for VA Aid and Attendance Pension Benefits to kick in and they need to pay their elder care invoices while they wait?

-What if you are waiting for Medicare or Medicaid or some other program to pay their invoices and YOU need extra cash flow?

Well, there's a new choice in town, actually not new, but one that you might not have known about or understood until now.

Kary Gray is going to take the time to explain it all for you on Thursday October 29, 2009 at 3pm Eastern, 2pm Central, 1pm MTN, 12noon Pacific.

Here's the dial in information, no registration required. Please don't miss this important call, you never know when this type of service might come in VERY handy, especially in tough economic times.

Conference ID: 816548#
Local Numbers: http://NConnects.com/Local
Thursday October 29, 2009 at 3pm Eastern, 2pm Central, 1pm MTN, 12noon Pacific.

See you there!
Valerie VanBooven RN BSN and Staff

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The Senior List® (www.theseniorlist.com) announces a major milestone in its growing database of eldercare providers. Recently, the 70,000th eldercare provider was added to the site’s database, making it one of the fastest growing eldercare resources in the country.

(PRWEB) October 22, 2009 — The Senior List® (www.theseniorlist.com) announces a major milestone in its growing database of eldercare providers. Recently, the 70,000th eldercare provider was added to the site's database, making it one of the fastest growing eldercare resources in the country. After a national launch in November of last year, The Senior List has firmly established its consumer-opinion brand in the much coveted boomer-focused marketplace.

"We're amazed at the growth of our brand, and now we're more focused than ever on growing our consumer-opinion numbers," says Chris Clark, co-founder and CEO. "To me, the biggest value for consumers will be realized when they can turn to a resource like The Senior List, and read meaningful testimonials from their peers. This will be our primary focus as we move into 2010".

We're amazed at the growth of our brand, and now we're more focused than ever on growing our consumer-opinion numbers

To me, the biggest value for consumers will be realized when they can turn to a resource like The Senior List, and read meaningful testimonials from their peers. This will be our primary focus as we move into 2010

I think The Senior List has the best interest of consumers and providers in mind, and I think both of those things can coexist in a consumer-opinion site. In business, reputation is everything; The Senior List simply provides a platform for the best to rise to the top

The Senior List is a consumer-opinion website focused on linking families to quality senior-services

online. The directory listings range from assisted living facilities and nursing homes, to elder law attorneys and everything in-between. Valerie VanBooven RN BSN, Owner, LTC Expert Publications (www.theltcexpert.com) requires that all of her clientele who have accounts via her www.LTCSocialMark.com program have a listing on The Senior List. Valerie and her staff have enrolled close to 200 providers nationwide, and they recommend the site to all 2500 of her regular readers. Ms. VanBooven remarks, "I think The Senior List has the best interest of consumers and providers in mind, and I think both of those things can coexist in a consumer-opinion site. In business, reputation is everything; The Senior List simply provides a platform for the best to rise to the top".

The Senior List is a free resource that allows families to review, rate, or add senior-service providers to the eldercare directory. Businesses can add their info to the database at no-charge, and consumers are strongly encouraged to share their opinions in an effort to help a neighbor in need. You can find The Senior List online at www.theseniorlist.com.

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Getting a great testimonial isn’t that hard, if you know the “formula”.
At our Fall Marketing Conference we did an entire session on the perfect testimonial.
Here are some of our results!

You should absolutely know the formula for terrific testimonials- order your copy of the  entire conference today: www.PowerMarketingConference.com

View everything at this link: http://www.screencast.com/t/reEjq7sE

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The Power Marketing Conference for Elder Care and Senior Service Providers was a huge success!

Here are some clips of content that you might have missed. Don’t forget to order the ENTIRE conference on CD- both video and audio included.

***It takes a moment for the video to load, so have patience!!***

You will need Adobe Flash Player 10 to view, download it here: http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/?promoid=DXLUJ

If you missed our first event in St. Louis Missouri

Sept 30- Oct 1 2009, don’t worry,

we taped the whole thing!

CLICK HERE TO GET EVERYTHING ON VIDEO AND AUDIO SHIPPED TO YOUR DOOR!

Single Pay $629: http://www.1shoppingcart.com/SecureCart/SecureCart.aspx?mid=C4F2E07B-E963-4BF2-B43B-5537CC70CC9E&pid=152588c2bbab4474b7454dfcb6a80e21

2-Pay Option $320 x 2 payments: http://www.1shoppingcart.com/SecureCart/SecureCart.aspx?mid=C4F2E07B-E963-4BF2-B43B-5537CC70CC9E&pid=776f1d5f80df4d9abb3d2e9bf58373f5

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 Posted by Michelle Bowles on Oct 9th, 2009
http://www.toprankblog.com/2009/10/social-media-in-healthcare-marketing-5-tips-for-approval/

For marketers in any industry—from manufacturing to real estate to banking, and everything in between—making the business case for social media isn’t a quick and easy process.

But in healthcare marketing, it’s an understatement to say that gaining buy-in for social media isn’t easy.

Consider for a moment just what healthcare marketers are up against:

• A multitude of privacy regulations
• Nursing and support staff shortages
• Increasing demand for services thanks to the quickly aging Baby Boomer generation

It’s not difficult to understand why some healthcare decision makers may be slow to adopt social media. But instead of throwing in the towel, consider these 5 tips for making the case for social media in healthcare marketing:

1. The movement has started. Healthcare may not be as quick to adopt social media as some other industries. But there are many hospitals and healthcare organizations that are quietly innovating on the social web, as Digital Influence blogger Rohit Bhargava suggests.

In a recent post, he points out that there are 367 US hospitals using social media. They are responsible for 10,000 Tweets from 267 Twitter accounts. When making your individual case for social media in healthcare marketing, leverage some of the great examples out there:

• Patients Like Me is an online community site created in 2004 by MIT engineers to allow patients to share information and their personal experiences. The goal is to connect patients with the same or similar diseases so they can rely on one another for support.
• The Center for Connected Health community website is designed for healthcare providers and policymakers. Community members can discuss controversial topics, and share best practices, new ideas, upcoming events and research.
• Individual hospitals are involved in social media efforts as well, Bhargava points out.  The Sarasota Memorial Hospital uses Twitter to answer patient questions and provide immediate customers service. In March, the Henry Ford Hospital used Twitter to connect with 1,900 people and answer questions during an actual brain surgery.

2. Patients—and potential future patients—are involved in social networks. A March 2009 report (pdf) from Nielson Online found that 67% of the global online population takes part in online communities. Plus, time spent on social media sites now accounts for almost 10% of all time online.

Clear and simple, patients use social media. Hospitals can utilize social channels to answer healthcare- or illness-related questions or simply provide medical information—just as the Sarasota Memorial and Henry Ford hospitals have done. If the numbers aren’t convincing enough, consider this: Patients are comparison shopping for hospitals, CNN reports.

With the increasing cost of healthcare and a growing number of available hospitals, it’s only natural. Social media is just one tool for hospitals and healthcare organizations to stay top of mind and relevant for patients.

3. Patients are online, and so are physicians. Consider a few statistics from Manhattan Research:

• As much as 89% of US physicians rely on the Internet as an essential part of their professional practice
• Approximately 64% of physicians now use smartphones
• 41% of physicians’ research takes place online The bottom line is physicians and other healthcare personnel are already spending time online.

Additionally, Doctors have their own social network, Sermo, which has over 110,000 practicing MD’s participating.

By embracing social media, hospitals and healthcare organizations can provide their current staff with a mechanism to share information and best practices. Plus, organizations can use their social efforts as an incentive when recruiting new employees.

4. Healthcare is top of mind, in the news and constantly changing. Particularly since the last presidential election, healthcare has been thrust into the public spotlight. From universal healthcare to electronic health records to patient privacy, there’s a new healthcare news item in the headlines every day. Social media can provide an effective mechanism for hospitals and healthcare organizations to stay involved in healthcare legislation discussion.

Take the lead from Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. The hospital CEO is using his blog to discuss and comment on potential health insurance legislation – among other topics.

5. Social media efforts don’t have to involve a lot of costs. Budget cuts have become a common business practice across nearly all industries—hospitals and healthcare organizations are no exception. But social media campaigns don’t have to include a significant financial investment.

Consider the healthcare marketing success story from the Mayo Clinic. The Mayo Clinic in 2005 began utilizing social media channels to promote and increase downloads of its podcasts. The clinic posts the podcasts, along with video and text, on its blogs. It also leverages a Facebook fan page, a Twitter account and a YouTube channel. Downloads of the podcasts have increased by more than 8,000%, thanks to using three free social channels.

Be sure to read this recent interview with Lee Aase, the manager of syndication and social media for Mayo Clinic, where he offers specific advice for other companies on his “MacGyver-style” testing , developing a social media strategy, winning management approval and measuring social media ROI.

These tips, of course, are just a starting point to help healthcare marketers make the case for social media in healthcare marketing and creating better connections with the healthcare community, hospitals and patients. What examples of social media in healthcare have you found worth pointing out?

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What does it cost to think?

The Original Post: What is the cost of thinking? Can be found at: http://www.relationship-economy.com/?p=5232

Your boss says”Our competitors are stealing our customers using this social media stuff. We need to use this stuff and do it better than our competitors and we need to do it NOW!”

You are then tasked with “doing it” but you have no experience or knowledge of what to do. So you look for help and find an outside resource whom supposedly has the experience and knowledge to know what to do. You bring the option of hiring this person to your boss and they ask about the cost and what will they get from using this resource.  You tell your boss the cost but aren’t sure exactly what it is you’re going to get. Then your boss says “I know we need to do this but I don’t know what it is or what we’ll get from it”.

How can a company put value on something they don’t understand?  How can they understand if they have no reference to “think about it”?.

What Is Required To Think?

Thinking about social media cannot increase understanding without the appropriate knowledge. Anything new or innovative takes time to understand and determine how to use it effectively.  In order to think effectively one must first acquire the knowledge necessary to think about using social media strategically, tactically and with specific purpose. Without the knowledge thinking will only produce the wrong outcomes because your thoughts are limited to what you know, not what you don’t know.

The reality is that learning to leverage social media requires people and organizations to reThink everything. This thing everyone calls social media has serious strategic implications and to just “do it” without gaining the knowledge to think about what needs to be done is a sure disaster.

Think About This

A business runs on communications. Without being able to effectively and efficiently communicate you end up wasting time and money. Money represents time and cost in rework, fixing misunderstandings, setting the wrong customer expectations and  not effectively and efficiently communicating to your employees, customers and your market.

The cost of not thinking about these issues is increased cost. However being able to “think” about these issues may require the infusion of new knowledge which may not exist in your organization. W. Edwards Deming once said “knowledge required to change the existing system to a better system must come from outside the existing system”. Why? Because the existing system is blinded by its own thinking. Get it?

Thinking About Social Media?

Who isn’t? The Corporate Executive Board said “Most companies are embracing social media—but too many are wasting their efforts through sloppy management”

More than 70% of companies are already using social media; many are planning to increase their spending on social media across the coming years. Whether for learning from customers, building their brands or a range of other hoped-for outcomes, companies are clearly diving in.

If you dive into the social media water without knowing its depth or where the rocks are you are likely to break your neck.  To avoid breaking your neck you should first get the knowledge about that which your about to dive into.  Without knowledge people, and entire organizations, perish.  Think before you jump. But before you can think effectively you must first get new knowledge.  Social media knowledge doesn’t come from self appointed gurus or experts who know how to get you followers and traffic. The cost of thinking increases when you don’t think. Get it?

What say you?

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October 5th, 2009 | by Josh Catone

Great article on Mashable: See the original text at: http://mashable.com/2009/10/05/social-media-healthcare/

The Smarter Cities series is supported by IBM. Read more about building a smarter planet on the IBM A Smarter Planet Blog.

I haven’t been to the doctor in almost 2 years. It’s not that I haven’t been sick during the past couple of years, but rather that finding a new doctor (I moved about 18 months ago) and finding the time needed for a doctor visit (including filling out insurance forms, answering medical history questions, and making the appointment) is difficult for a busy person. But in the future, social media and the web might help to make doctor visits more pain-free.

Web-based and social media tools are making it easier to get health information, find doctors, make appointments, keep records, and get support. These tools are revolutionizing the healthcare field and the way people approach the practice of medicine. If you know of any other great sites or web services that are making healthcare smarter, please share them in the comments.

Finding Health Information

One of the most obvious ways that the web and social media are making our lives healthier, is in the proliferation of health information. I can remember getting sick when I was a child and watching my mother haul out a huge thousand-plus page medical encyclopedia to try and figure out what I might have and whether I needed to be taken to a doctor (or what sort of questions to ask when we got there). Today, though, health mega-portals like WebMD, Revolution Health, and Yahoo! Health contain more information than that big book my mom used to own ever could — and it’s all searchable and available instantly.

Being able to use the web for self diagnosis is truly revolutionizing the way many of us care for ourselves, and how we approach doctor visits. Other sites, such as rVita, which registers qualified medical practitioners to provide health information, and Hakia Health, which maintains a database of vetted medical information sources, help users to make sure the information they are getting online is accurate, reliable, and medically sound. Another web site, OrganizedWisdom, is something like Wikipedia () for health, but every article is written and reviewed by qualified professionals

Locating Good Doctors

Choosing a doctor to visit every time you are ill is an important decision. Because medical care is so personal, you want to find someone you can trust and with whom you have a good rapport. Most people tend to rely on referrals from friends or colleagues when searching out a new doctor, so for those who have recently moved to a new city where they don’t know anyone, that can mean going without a doctor for a while or visiting a doctor picked out blindly from impersonal yellow page listings.

Web sites like Vitals and HealthGrades, both of which provide independent doctor ratings based on a variety of data, are making it easier to locate a good doctor by using more information than just their name in the phone book. Other sites, such as FindaDoc and RateMDs.com rely more heavily on a consumer rating model, meaning you can pick a doctor based on the feelings of your peers.

The web is even making appointment setting easier. In addition to providing a database of doctors with consumer reviews, ZocDoc also lets you book an appointment with that doctor straight from the Internet. It currently works in New York City.

Receive Care

Though for most serious conditions you shouldn’t rely on the web for diagnosis or care, there are a handful of web sites beginning to offer actual medical treatment from real doctors. American Well, for example, creates software to facilitate online doctor consultations via a webcam that is currently being used by military service members and their families for web-based psychological evaluations, while BreakThrough offers a similar online service for civilian consumers who want to talk to qualified therapists from home by phone, chat, video, or email. UK-based MyChoiceMD.com also offers a completely online doctor consultation service, as well.

For those more interested in self-diagnosis, DoubleCheckMD can help you determine if your symptoms are the result of sickness or a medication you’re taking, or if medications are safe to take at the same time. The virtual doctor at FreeMD, meanwhile, will help you to figure out what’s wrong and if you need to visit a doctor.

If proven to be safe and accurate, online consultation and self-diagnosis, in addition to being an agoraphobe’s dream come true, could potentially save a lot of money by reducing overhead costs associated with running a busy office.

Keeping Better Records

One way in which the web promises to severely reduce healthcare costs, is by digitizing records. Record-keeping accounts for a reportedly huge amount of the costs associated with the modern healthcare system, yet these records are kept mostly using archaic technology that is dire need of modernization. Using so-called Personal Health Record (PHR) systems that would allow consumers to access their health records over the web like a credit score and send them anywhere they authorized (to doctors, emergency care centers, pharmacists, etc.) promises to revolutionize the way we give and receive care.

Though there are certainly major privacy issues to address, PHRs such as Microsoft HealthVault, Google Health, WebMD PHR, and Revolution Health PHR mean millions of dollars in cost-savings and potentially safer transfer of records to those who need to see them (so that we can assure, for example, that a patient is never given a medication they have an allergy to).

For Doctors

Social media and web-based applications are also affecting the lives of doctors for the better. Practice Fusion, which recently received an investment from Salesforce.com, is something like Google Apps for doctors. The company offers a suite of free electronic health records keeping tools that doctors can use to more effectively manage and keep track of the health of their patients in a secure environment. Practice Fusion is used by about 18,000 physicians and practice managers in the US.

Another site, called PharmaSURVEYOR, allows both doctors and patients to keep detailed records of the drugs they are taking to avoid any nasty interactions, and can create “what-if” scenarios for determining the most effective and safest combination of medications for treatment. On the more social side, there is Sermo, a fast-growing social network for medical practitioners, on which doctors come together to share research, exchange observations, and support one another.

Getting Support

Creating and enabling support communities online is one area in which social media is perfectly suited. Online support group sites like PatientsLikeMe and DailyStrength offer online discussion groups for people going through a wide variety of medical treatments, ailments, or conditions. CarePages connects patients by encouraging them to share their stories through blogging and building support circles among friends, family, and peers.

Another support group site, MedHelp, offers a wide variety of personal health applications, such as weight, addiction, blood pressure, and cholesterol trackers. These apps plug into the site’s social networking and support forums to give patients ways to track their health and progress while they receive support from others going through the same thing.

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A Great Reason to Understand More About Alternative Funding Sources Like Reverse Mortgages: Waves of new fund cuts imperil US nursing homes

HARTFORD, Conn. – The nation's nursing homes are perilously close to laying off workers, cutting services — possibly even closing — because of a perfect storm wallop from the recession and deep federal and state government spending cuts, industry experts say.

A Medicare rate adjustment that cuts an estimated $16 billion in nursing home funding over the next 10 years was enacted at week's end by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services — on top of state-level cuts or flat-funding that already had the industry reeling.

And Congress is debating slashing billions more in Medicare funding as part of health care reform.

Add it all up, and the nursing home industry is headed for a crisis, industry officials say.

"We can foresee the possibility of nursing homes having to close their doors," said David Hebert, a senior vice president at the American Health Care Association. "I certainly foresee that we'll have to let staff go."

The funding crisis comes as the nation's baby boomers age ever closer toward needing nursing home care. The nation's 16,000 nursing homes housed 1.85 million people last year, up from 1.79 million in 2007, U.S. Census Bureau figures show.

Already this year, 24 states have cut funding for nursing home care and other health services needed by low-income people who are elderly or disabled, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonprofit research firm based in Washington, D.C.

Some facilities are now closed because of money problems — including four in Connecticut — and others have laid off workers because of what industry officials say are inadequate Medicaid reimbursement rates. Medicare cuts are troubling, they say, because the higher Medicare reimbursements have been used to compensate for the lower Medicaid rates.

In Griswold, Conn., the community's only nursing home shut down earlier this year because of rising costs and an inability to pay for $4.9 million in needed renovations for the 90-bed facility.

"A 92-year-old woman was screaming and crying as she was loaded into the ambulance, saying 'This is my home,'" Griswold First Selectman Philip Anthony said. His 88-year-old mother was a resident of the same home at the time.

Anthony sought and found a new facility for his mother, but she died of pneumonia before the Griswold Health and Rehabilitation Center closed in the spring.

"To be hit with a sudden and deliberate closure like this, it just drained the heart right out of you," Anthony said.

Connecticut Gov. M. Jodi Rell and state lawmakers gave no Medicaid rate increases to nursing homes in the state last fiscal year and kept the funding flat for the next two years.

The Griswold home was one of four nursing homes in the state that have closed since December because of financial problems, a higher rate than usual, said Deborah Chernoff, a spokeswoman for District 1199 of the New England Health Care Employees Union in Connecticut, which represents more than 20,000 health care workers in the state.

"We're really teetering on the edge of what we see as the collapse of the long-term care system," she said.

Chernoff said many of Connecticut's 240 or so nursing homes have been reducing workers' hours to deal with money problems, while two are in bankruptcy now.

Also this year across the country:

• The Motion Picture & Television Fund said in January it would close a hospital and nursing home in Woodland Hills, Calif., founded to care for actors and other entertainment industry workers, because of financial losses.

• The Westchester Medical Center in suburban New York said it would close a nursing home and cut 400 jobs to deal with Medicaid and other fund cuts.

• The Dove Health Care nursing home in Glendale, Wis., near Milwaukee, closed this summer because of heavy debt.

• Medicaid reimbursement rates to nursing homes were cut this year by Rhode Island (5 percent); Michigan (4 percent) and Florida (3 percent).

• Washington state legislators whacked nursing home funding by $93 million for the next two fiscal years.

Gary Weeks, executive director of the Washington Health Care Association, said some of the organization's 400 assisted living and nursing homes have laid off workers. Some will not survive, he said.

At the request of Weeks' association, a federal judge in July issued a temporary restraining order blocking the cuts because state officials didn't do a required analysis of how the reductions would affect care quality and access.

"There's a lot of pain going on everywhere, but it's clearly a crisis in long-term care," Weeks said.

"You're going to find that some folks go out of business," he said. "Some will look for more Medicare patients — Medicare pays more than Medicaid."

In Washington, D.C., health care interests are resisting President Barack Obama's plan to pay for his health care overhaul by slowing Medicaid and Medicare spending. Obama wants to trim $313 billion from the two programs over 10 years.

It's not clear exactly how all the health spending cuts will affect nursing homes.

A University of Pittsburgh study earlier this year found nearly 1,800 nursing homes nationwide closed from 1999 to 2005, about 2 percent each year.

One of the study's authors, health policy and management professor Nick Castle, said the annual closure rate is rising, for reasons that include inadequate Medicaid reimbursement rates and the push for more home and community care.

"It's come to a head recently with state budgets being in such jeopardy that they're cutting in all areas," Castle said.

The federal stimulus package approved in February includes $87 billion in Medicaid funding to help states. But Connecticut and several other states are using a loophole in the legislation to divert the money to budget items unrelated to health care, according to a congressional study.

On average, Medicaid payments by states to nursing homes fell short by $12 per patient, per day last year — nearly $4.2 billion in unreimbursed costs for Medicaid-allowed expenses, according to the AHCA.

In New York City, the Metropolitan Jewish Health System laid off about 200 of its 1,000 employees at three nursing homes in Brooklyn because the state cut Medicaid funding by 10 percent to 14 percent, said President and Chief Executive Eli Feldman.

"We understand there's a recession/depression," Feldman said. "But this is not health reform … and the victims are basically the people who live in the facilities. The Legislature basically says, 'Too sick, too old, too bad."

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Twitter to Launch Lists Feature: A Benefit for Elder Care and Senior Service Providers

Coming Soon! Twitter to Launch Lists Feature

Nick Kallen @nk from the project lead on twitter lists reported that twitter is testing a new feature with a small subset of users.
Their idea is to allow people to curate lists of Twitter accounts. For example, you could create a list of the funniest Twitter accounts of all time, athletes, local businesses, friends etc.

The Lists would be public by default (but can be made private) and the lists you create are linked from your profile. Other Twitter users can then subscribe to your lists. This means lists have the potential to be an important new discovery mechanism for great tweets and accounts.

A Benefit for Elder Care and Senior Service Providers: Twitter Launches List Feature

The Twitter platform team started working on this feature because of the frequent requests they received from people who were looking for a better way to organize information on Twitter. Of course, that means not just twitter.com—the Platform team will follow up in a few days with information on the Lists API. This will allow developers to add support for Lists into their favorite Twitter apps.

They’re just doing limited testing for now. But once they’ve tested the feature out a bit, they’ll launch it for all accounts!

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