Bumps, Bruises and Growing Pains
I learned a new word this week, Calcific Tendonitis. What it means is that some calcium deposit in your rotator cuff breaks down into toothpaste like substance and irritates everything around it. It feels like…. Number 10 on the pain scale. Bad enough that I wasn’t sure it wasn’t my heart so I went to the ER. They gave me pain pills and sent me to more doctors who gave me more pills and said to see more doctors. My chiropractor told me to cut out my Diet Pepsi and get acupuncture. Oh Joy, take away my one big vice and stick needles in me.
The Home Care business can be like that. You are going along fine, thinking you have it figured out, when BOOM! Out of nowhere comes something that knocks you off balance. It hurts like crazy. First, you don’t even care if you get it fixed, you just want the pain to go away. Think OASIS, your first customer complaint or implementing software.
Then you want to know what the problem is exactly, and how you got to that point. Did you do something wrong? Did you forget to do something? Was there a big gap in your learning process? As you move forward, you start thinking about how to prevent a recurrence of the problem.
Pain is usually a symptom of an underlying problem. It acts as a motivator to force us to action to correct that problem. If we wait for it to go away without changing anything, we often find it comes back to bite us harder the next time. Problems in our business act the same way.
Suppose we have a client complaint. If we ignore the complaint, it may go away. However, so will the client and any future clients that person may have referred. A quick response to allow the client to express their concern will validate you are concerned. An honest effort to rectify the situation will always be better received than a quick dismissal. This is not to say that the client is always in the right. However, an honest look at the situation and a timely response to the client will often be effective. It can also be an early warning sign of a deeper underlying problem related to employee training, agency processes or some other issue.
As with most things, it is better to prevent a problem than to experience the results. How do we prevent things we don’t know about? By anticipating and learning. I don’t know anyone who will tell you they know all there is to know in the home care business. Nevertheless, we are accountable to meet all the requirements and standards. Owners, Directors and Managers need to know as much about the current and upcoming standards as possible. If you wait until the implementation dates, you are probably way behind. If you take a shortcut in hiring and get a bad egg in your agency, you may find they cost you far more than their salary.
There is also a trickle down effect with your staff. If you train and expect your staff to look at the whole picture of your industry standards, you will have a wiser group of people supporting your agency. They might hold you to be more accountable. They might catch things you have missed, or turn out to be the “guru” of a particular agency task. Imagine if one of your office people suddenly turns out to have a talent and lust for coding because you sent her to an inservice. A clinician decides the new software is the best thing since sliced bread and masters it quickly and shares her enthusiasm with everyone. By opening up, you may find that something that is an acute growing pain to you is the opportunity for someone else to go for the gold.
Just as pain is not always preventable, bumps, bruises, and growing pains are part of the daily life of a growing agency. If we use them to direct us to healthier, smarter behavior, our agencies can thrive and mature. We are better prepared to deal with problems when they do come.
