Focus rehab marketing on prevention, not illness
Avoid old, one-dimensional objectives
Want to envision the relationship between rehabilitation providers and major local employers in the future? Throw out the traditional, one-dimensional objective of merely marketing your services for their injured employees and start thinking more broadly.
"The old paradigm is that the rehab providers treat illness," says Clair Jones, MS, assistant director of rehabilitation services for Sharp HealthCare System in San Diego. "The new paradigm is that the rehab provider is involved in prevention and wellness, and you need to make that shift if you work with employers.
"We’re trying to have a multidimensional approach that represents a shift in strategic thinking and relationships with providers that are creative, collaborative, and partnerships," he says. "Alliances can be formed around the employer becoming a partner and becoming what I consider a rehab provider. And another change is for the rehab provider to look at more business opportunities with employers than just job placement and seeing their injured workers."
To do that, providers need to think in terms of alliances with employers that result in some new types of connections, including these:
• Employers become rehab providers.
• Rehab providers and employers jointly serve the community with prevention and wellness programs.
• Rehab providers focus on business deals with employers, supplementing traditional income.
The old philosophy required rehab providers to:
• treat illness;
• center everything around a hospital or department;
• make programs hospital-oriented;
• work on fee-for-service basis;
• defend the past;
• treat injured workers.
The new philosophy requires providers to:
• provide wellness/prevention programs;
• create community-based programs;
• make programs employer-oriented;
• learn organization structures;
• form partnerships with employers.
Sharp HealthCare System gains financially and increases its market share from such a philosophical shift, Jones says. "No. 1, we see the employer market as being a really important market in terms of health care delivery. And we want to strengthen our relationship with employers because we know that by strengthening it, we can improve our visibility in the marketplace. By having strong relationships with employers, we get our name recognized through all ranks of an employer, including managers and employees."
That recognition results in more employees selecting Sharp to be their primary health care provider.
Jones says higher visibility can be accomplished through these types of new strategies:
o Move services out of the hospital and into the workplace. "We’re trying to take therapy services that include physical therapy, functional capacity evaluations, and work-hardening programs directly to the work site," he says, "and there are some reasons for doing this that make really good sense to me from a health care provider standpoint."
For instance, he says, it’s a great way to have access to employers and employees. Instead of waiting until someone has an injury and comes to visit your facility, you are there at the workplace. That consistent visibility helps providers market their services and build name recognition among employees. "It’s a way to get up front in that marketplace," Jones adds.
o Work with employers to get employees focused on returning to their jobs. Employers are chiefly concerned about how long it will take their workers to return to the job after a work-related injury and about controlling the costs of a workers’ compensation claim. "By being on site, you’re able to partner more with the employer in terms of developing early-return-to-work initiatives," Jones says.
Providers should work with an employer’s human resources office to develop programs that help employees safely return to work.
Because therapists are working with patients in a real work environment and not a simulated work setting, they can easily make any necessary modifications to a person’s work habits. Also by being on site, rehab providers can address injury prevention strategies and help employers create ergonomic guidelines. "That’s something our therapists are really good at doing, and it’s much more efficient to do it with employers through an alliance or partnership," Jones says.
"Those are some reasons why, when we look at expanding employer alliances, one of our strategies is to get out of the rehab facility and into the employer’s own shop," he adds.
o Save employers time and money. A provider-employer alliance can create efficiencies that save time and money. For example, when providers work with patients at their job sites, it reduces travel time and lost work time for employees. Also, it reduces the employer’s expenses in transportation, finding replacements for employees who are off of work, and paid sick time. "Plus it’s a good way to get them back to work sooner," Jones says. "Typically, the longer a person is off of work, the more difficult it is to get them back to work."
Get workers back on the job faster
The sooner an injured worker returns to the work site to receive therapy and begin with light work, the faster that employee will return full-time, he says.
When workers receive therapy in the workplace, employers have an opportunity to keep tabs on them and emphasize the importance of returning to full-time duty. "What you don’t want is the employee sitting at home wondering if the employer or supervisor or anybody cares about them," Jones explains. "That leads to dissatisfaction on the part of the employee, and many times they’re more prone to go get an attorney and do other things that drive up costs."
o Gain name recognition. Rehab providers chiefly benefit from the opportunity to gain name recognition and to market their services inexpensively. When other employees continually see therapists from a particular rehab provider at their job site, they are more likely to call that rehab facility when they have health needs.
"So if their son has an accident at school or hurts his leg or back on the football field, they’re going to think, I see this rehabilitation organization at work, so we’ll go there because I know them,’" Jones says.
o Provide occupational training at real workplaces. Rehab providers also can develop alliances with employers who could participate in providing health care services to the provider’s patients, even when they are not employees of that company. Rehab providers can ask certain employers, such as hotels, food service businesses, and utility companies, whether they can place clients in the workplace for a job situational assessment program. The employer pays the client whatever salary or hourly wage that’s required legally, raising the salary if the employee does the work of an actual employee.
For brain-injury patients who may not be able to return to regular employment, a provider can secure jobs where they’re not expected to be function at normal levels. Both the provider and the employer can assess how the patient is performing at various tasks and determine whether the patient could return to full employment. "We can do a really good assessment of them in a real work environment, as opposed to a vocational rehab unit or lab," Jones says.
Employers might choose to participate because it’s a community service and gives them a chance to see themselves as a caring organization for the community. "Certain companies and supervisors see this as a way to help and benefit their community, so they’ll almost adopt this individual and work with him to help him regain skills so he can return to work," he says. "Then if the person turns out to be a good worker, they can hire him."
Before approaching employers, providers should assess potential partners thoroughly to make sure there will be a good match between the clients and the workplace.
"Many times we send a job coach with our clients into the company, so the job coach can supervise the rehab client and make sure the person is doing the work correctly," Jones says. "Over time, we’ll take the job coach out, as the client becomes more integrated with job tasks at the company." One employer that formed this type of partnership with Sharp HealthCare was a hotel that employed 12 rehab patients in transitional work situations. Of the 12, about half eventually were hired by the hotel, Jones recalls.
Rehab providers also can arrange with employers to have rehab clients perform work on a contract basis. "Many employers now are interested in outsourcing particular types of work, such as recycling or plant watering, so we can actually perform the work by bringing in a group of clients to do it," Jones says. "We use that as a transitional work experience for our clients."
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