One little slick trick that helps market your facility while bringing your target market group straight into your facility – Senior Sundays!  The concept is this:  Pick the first Sunday of the month (or second Sunday, etc.) and open up Sunday lunches FREE to the public for any seniors age 55 and over. Many facilities would immediately be concerned over the cost.  Don’t be.  Most lunches run $3 – $4 food cost.  Even...

Nursing home companies each have their own version of how a morning meeting is supposed to be run.  The format is usually put together by a clinician or by someone who just doesn’t have the right kind of exerience needed for this task.  As a result, I have found most morning meeting formats to be unacceptable and lacking in basic, necessary information. You also have some old school administrators who will tell you that no morning...

Oftentimes, when a facility has had survey issues or turnover in leadership, employee morale also suffers.  One nice little tool that can drastically improve morale in your facility is the Thank You note. You should attempt to create an atmosphere of not just catching people doing something but catching people doing something right.  There are several ways to do this.  Obviously, one is to make rounds and observe.  Secondly, you can...

One of the tricks I came across in marketing nursing homes is to partner with other vendors and providers in the industry.  “Well, that’s not a big secret, Mark.  Everyone knows this,” you might think.  But, do you know how to utilize these relationships? For example, one of the areas my facilities specialize in (because I make sure they specialize in it.  I make sure we get tons of the education, the right supplies,...

It never fails, someone needs to pick up their paycheck before the scheduled paycheck disbursement time.  We’ll say 2:oo pm on Friday.  You know that there is a reason you were told not to let the paychecks go early.  You know that if you let one employee do it, then every other employee will also have an emergency where they need to get theirs as well.  But this one employee is a really hard-worker.  And, she’s going out...

Are your residents complaining that there is nothing to do?  Is your employee morale at an all-time low?  Do you feel the need to grab a couple pairs of boxing gloves and let your CNAs and LPNs just go at it?  Do you have family members with nothing better to do than to count how many times your CNA checked the other resident across the hall and then tell that family the result? If not addressed, rest assured, this will not go away. ...