This is the audio replay and transcript from the October 20, 2011 SkillSurvey webinar entitled,
“How HCAHPS is Impacting Hospitals Financially.”

Download the transcript (includes graphs).

Gunter Wessels, PhD is the healthcare practice principal at Total Innovation Group and is also an author of articles about changes in healthcare initiatives including HCAHPS and value-based purchasing. Today he’ll be showing you how to recognize the elements of HCAHPS and healthcare reform that are driving quality process improvements for hospitals right now. He will also examine implications in care delivery planning and personnel development.

Download the PDF or read it here. »

Insight from Senior Partner Sam O’Rear

Value-Based Purchasing is a Medicare-driven program and is currently in use by several of the large third-party insurance companies.

Insurance companies have learned to go to higher quality employers with high productivity expectations who want their employees to be well. They’ve also been able to amply prove that the higher the quality of the diagnosis and delivery of care, the lower the overall cost of delivering care to those patients.

Medicare has been studying this for going on five years. They started three years ago with laying down the expectation of Value-Based Purchasing as part of the Medicare program.

Medicare is saying,
Read this business-building idea. »

Insight from Senior Partner Sam O’Rear

It is important to move a level above your traditional call points.

Your traditional call point is not going to be aware of all the implications coming from healthcare reform. You need to go up one or two levels. Then you get to talk with people who deal with this daily.

It’s also important you don’t threaten your typical call point, where they feel they are losing control of the situation.

We never want them to feel like they are losing control. But I think we do have to challenge them.

We have to say, “Here is what’s happening. As you know with reform, the Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) are going to be a big part of the future. What are the current plans for this organization to be a part of an ACO?”

Read this business-building idea. »

I recently observed an interchange between a high value customer and a mid career salesperson. The rep was a “closer.”

In our meeting the customer responded to the end of the presentation with, “We don’t have enough budget for that.”

The sales rep replied, “What if we could make this fit in your budget?”

To this the customer said, “Um, well, I don’t like the payment terms, either.”

Read this business-building idea. »

If you’ve invested more than a few weeks in your career as a sales professional, you have stood there in horror at least once. It’s a gut wrenching scene you see in slow motion.

There is your promising, diligently worked and professionally approached prospect holding your best deal.

As you uncap your pen, your prospect’s eyes suddenly glaze over and he lurches, sending the deal spiraling into a spinning propeller. After the buzzing and grinding stops, you swoop in, tenderly scoop up the still-smoking, barely-alive deal, and rush it to the Sales Order ER.

Read this business-building idea. »

If you sell anything you will get a kick out of this video. I recommend you watch it twice for the full effect.

“We didn’t budget for this much.”

Can you relate?