An Occupational Therapist assistant by trade, Kacie Pritt, Regional Director of Development of HCF Management and BTG Ambassador, shares first-hand tactics and strategies for building occupancy in skilled nursing facilities. 

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Produced by Solinity Marketing

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00:09 - 00:34

Intro

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00:34 - 01:06

Josh Crisp

Welcome to Bridge the Gap podcast, the senior living podcast. I'm Josh, your host on this wonderful Monday morning, and we have an awesome guest in store for you today. We have Kacie Pritt, the regional director of Business Development at HCF management. Welcome to the show.

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00:53 - 00:55

Kacie Pritt

Thank you. I'm so excited to be here.

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00:55 - 01:06

Josh Crisp

It is so good to be with you. For our audience that may not know, you are also a 2024 Bridge the Gap Ambassador. How has that been for you?

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01:06 - 01:18

Kacie Pritt

It's been so fun. I've got to connect with a lot of new people and brainstorm with people that I wouldn't have met without joining. I feel like there's been a lot of education and collaboration that's come from it, and I love being a part of

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01:18 - 01:29

Josh Crisp

So as the Regional Director of Business Development, unpack a little for us. What you do, what your job consists of and a little bit about your background, Kacie.

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01:29 - 01:59

Kacie Pritt

So I'll start with, I'm an occupational therapist. Assistant by trade. I started as a therapist 14 years ago now. and then I went to be a director of rehab, and went to be a liaison. And now I'm here in this role. At HCF, we have seven nursing homes in Pennsylvania. And then I have one home health brand. And my job is sales, business development. Anything that has to do with going out into the community and marketing. And I do oversee a sales team of five

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02:00 - 02:38

Josh Crisp

No spare time at all. Sounds like you are very, very busy. We were talking a little bit, before the show. You've had some amazing success. in your time at HCF and brought to the table a lot of strengths and strategies that have helped you boost census and particularly over the last year and a half or so, when much of the industry is still recovering and census is on the rise. But, I believe I heard you say a 26% jump in census. Is that correct?

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02:38 - 02:39

Kacie Pritt

That's correct. Yeah.

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02:40 - 03:05

Josh Crisp

That is a huge improvement. So that alone gives us a lot to talk about because I know as a network, one of the things that we love to do is share success stories, share things that are working. so that our industry can improve and have ideas shared together. So unpack that a little bit for us. What has been working over the last year and a half for you?

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03:05 - 04:34

Kacie Pritt

Yeah, I think that the biggest thing would be just the alignment between sales and operations. So Joe Weeks, who was the regional director of operations for Pennsylvania, I often referred to him as my work wife. He has been my right hand man since day one. We've kind of looked at the region at a very strategic approach.

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When we first started, we saw, okay, where are our buildings right now? What's going on internally, externally, how are the referrals coming and are we responding appropriately to those referrals? And just staying curious with the teams to try to identify opportunities and really get an understanding of what was going on? Then with that, we looked at how Joe would take the internal team, so he would make sure that they understood why it was important for sales and operations to work together.

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How both of us played a part in the bigger vision. We needed to align. We needed to collaborate. We needed to know, okay, you know, what is their staffing? What are they able to accommodate? Those back to the basic approaches. I guess now you wouldn't really think about those basic things. But just going back to that and looking and seeing, okay, how are we actually functioning? Are we working as a team, and with that, the teamwork part of it like making sure that the buildings have an investment in the sales team and the sales team has investment in the building staff that each department is working in unity and not as their own silos.

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04:34 - 05:04

Josh Crisp

Well, that makes a lot of sense. So bridging the gap between the sales teams and operational teams, I would imagine what you all have uncovered, over the last year and a half, it's been a lot of different things. Can you give us some examples that may provide some insight that maybe common things that we just, oh, we're not thinking about because we think, oh, that's too simple. And too basic, that should maybe be happening. But if we don't focus on it, those basics can slip through the cracks.

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05:04 - 06:26

Kacie Pritt

I think the first thing is just open communication. You know, if you do not communicate thoroughly and effectively, direct to one another, usually there's gaps and people tend to fill those gaps with their own thoughts, which we saw a lot. So that would be one example. I think that the second example would be to say, we had somebody that needed a bariatric transportation from the hospital to the nursing home, or maybe had multiple appointments.

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There's a lot of facilities that were saying, “Oh, well, our transportation service cannot accommodate that here locally.” And I'm like, okay, staying curious, when did you receive that information last? And it typically was like five years ago or prior to Covid that they were told that and things change. So I think just really being curious and when you're being told, no can’t or what those barriers are – trying to dig in more to that to find out, is this really happening right now or is this just something that somebody was told a while ago or was pre-Covid policy and now it's not?

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Another thing too is the insurance payers. So during Covid there were some things that changed. And to be financially stable it put things in place that made sense with insurance companies. You know, relooking at your contracts. Are things up to are we able to financially accommodate these patients now or not?

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06:26 - 06:51

Josh Crisp

Open communication. I think everyone would agree that listening is hugely important. But sometimes it can kind of get lost if you don't have systems and processes and some formality to kind of force that to happen. Have you noticed anything that you're doing in particular that has established that as a regular way of doing business that you could share with the audience?

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06:51 - 08:12

Kacie Pritt

Yeah, I think that there's two things with that. And the first thing would be just coming to the conversation, as you're curious, you're not trying to judge anything that's being said as well as support. Like you're there to support them. You're there to help them obtain their goals. And you can only do that if you know truly what's going on.

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So creating that culture within those internal teams, so the internal building itself. And then also the sales team at the building level, making sure that they have that communication as well. They're there to support one another. And then I think that the second thing with that, don't minimize something if you see that it is a potential barrier. Make sure that you're talking about it. Or if it's really hard for you to work through one thing, it shouldn't be that hard. We should be able to work through our processes very seamlessly. So, if there's anything that's kind of hold up, make sure that you're checking in on it. Our teams meet daily, like our sales team talks with our administrators every single day.

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And then we also have a weekly meeting that's focused around specific sales tactics and where we should be going. as well as the quarterly strategic planning, we have them do that together because it's their goals. It's their plan. You know, they both need to be invested and working together to get to the bigger

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08:12  - 08:41

Josh Crisp

so, Kacie, playing devil's advocate. I'm sitting here trying to think of how some of our listeners may be thinking, okay, I understand a weekly meeting. But daily? How can we possibly have a daily meeting? Well, it seems like that has been one of the secret ingredients in having this open but consistent and frequent communication. So how is the format of that? Is that more of a stand up meeting? Is this, more of, you know, a roundtable? How do you make that happen on a daily basis?

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08:41 - 09:11

Kacie Pritt

Yeah. So some of the facilities start in the morning – just real quick. “This is my bed availability. I have this many discharges. What do you have going on?” It's not so much like a meeting where we have an agenda. I mean, to sit down and go over all these. It's just a real quick touchpoint. Hey, what's going on? What do you have? That type. And then as we have admissions that are coming throughout the day or the week, we accept, we let them know, “Hey, yes, like this person's coming. You have no more female beds left. Okay, great.” You know, we just make sure that we communicate that to everybody on the sales

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09:11 - 09:36

Josh Crisp

I'm curious if, since this has been a challenge, as I've heard from many operators, oftentimes, you know, we want to increase our census and then we have staffing limitations. Have you all experienced in this explosive growth in raising your census any challenges related to staffing, and how are you accommodating that?

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09:36 - 09:57

Kacie Pritt

Yes, there have been challenges and we still have like I said, I had the seven SNF buildings and then I also have a home health branch and our home health branch. We seem to have a little bit more of a harder time with staffing versus our buildings. And it's just been just don't stop hiring.

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09:57 - 10:15

Josh Crisp

So just because your census is down doesn't mean you stop recruiting efforts and all that. So you have to be ready for it. So what are some other ways that you have been able to, deeply increase your census? I mean, 26% over the course of a year or so. That's significant.

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10:15 - 10:51

Kacie Pritt

Yeah, I think also just communication with the hospitals or with your referral sources, making sure that that is also open and transparent. You hear a lot whenever you're in the hospitals and talking with the director of operations for discharge planning or whatever. I've heard multiple times that timely feedback or timely answers or timely responses is not a thing with skilled nursing facilities.

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It's a barrier that they frequently have. So finding out what is the best way to respond to those referrals and what is their expectation on a time, what goals do they have? Understanding kind of where their goals are.

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10:52 - 11:38

Josh Crisp

You just touched on a huge point, which is the communication with your referral sources. And those can be various different types of referral sources. Those can also be various different personalities and work settings.

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I have heard often times from sales teams, that are out in the field or those that are communicating with different referrals and discharge planners, caseworkers and things like that, that it's oftentimes difficult, to, to even get in touch with those and get a minute or get 30s or two minutes to kind of update. So what are some tricks that you all have used, that have been effective, some methodologies to keep that open chain of communication?

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11:38 - 12:17

Kacie Pritt

Yeah. It just starts with the first conversation. The first time that you do talk with them is letting them know, like we're partners and figuring out what that looks like for them. And you know what's best for you. But remembering they have different expectations to me, as far as length of stays and you know, how to get people out timely. especially if they're an observation level versus an inpatient. You know, there's all of those different things. So they have different metrics that they have to meet. And if they know that you're going to be a partner with them and help them to meet their expectations that's been one thing that has been very helpful.

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12:17 - 13:34

Josh Crisp

So I think what I'm hearing you say is to help your referral partners win. Because if you can help them win, you know, they have more incentive to obviously, be sending those referrals to you. and you're right, they've all got different metrics that they're being, you know, incentivized, so to speak, to do, that their, their performance is based on. And so, and I imagine those can all be a little bit different as well, depending on the referral source and the unique situation. So, I would imagine it takes some time just in diligence for you to know every single one of your referral partners and what they need specifically from you

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That's a really big, important job for a sales team. And even keeping track of that, specifically for you as a regional, you know, I know many of our listeners are in regional positions like yourself, where a lot of communities, a lot of different, types of staffing situations, a lot of different acuity that they deal with and a lot of different referral partners. How are you keeping up with that as a regional? How do you keep all your teams in line and know the different referral partners and all the different markets?

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13:34 - 14:23

Kacie Pritt

I think that, there have been a few times where I've been thrown into the fire per se, and had to run the referrals and had to talk with, you know, working at that level. When I was hiring and that made me see, like, okay, so this is how things are functioning. And that was step one. Step two is whenever I'm training my new sales representatives, making sure that they understand and are introduced and we have the same vision as far as how I would like that to go or what we need to do or what the hospital would like to see. And then I have weekly meetings with my teams just to make sure that things are going the way that they should. And then I also have monthly and quarterly meetings with hospital executives just to make sure I'm a partner and they're my partner. So it's the same thing.

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14:23 - 14:54

Josh Crisp

Do you have any, I would say like strategy, behind specific time that your team spends, whether it's internal communication with operations versus a certain percentage of their time, is selling, so to speak, communicating with those referral sources? Are there certain ratios that you're shooting for when you're kind of allocating, your team's time accordingly?

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14:54:13 - 15:40

Kacie Pritt

No. So with that, I think how we have approached it in Pennsylvania has been, okay, this is our goal. We do what we need to do to get to that whether that is we're spending three hours there to help them out. You know who whatever referral partner that might or we only have to spend 15 minutes and we're good to go and on to the

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So I think that as far as, like a per, you know, it takes us this long or I don't have any set out expectations like that. I mean, if there's people that are listening to this that do have anything like that, that they would like to share back to me, I definitely would be open for that collaboration. Just because I'm still kind of trying to figure out what is the best process. But right now that is what we are doing and that is what's working for

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15:40 - 16:18

Josh Crisp

I want to start rounding out the show here. talking about a couple of things. So you've obviously been very successful in your career. you've created a network for yourself. you've gotten very involved. You're now on our podcast talking about success tips for other professionals and sharing that wealth of knowledge. So for the young, new, leader that is out there listening, that's trying to learn and trying to determine how to establish their own network and get their foot in the door and really be successful. What are some, maybe takeaways that you would give them if they don't hear anything else from the show?

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16:18 - 16:45

Kacie Pritt

The biggest thing for me has been just to go for it. Don't let any sort of preconceived thoughts or fears hold you back. If you have questions, if you're trying to get a hold of somebody or connect with somebody new, maybe ask people that you already have connected with, hey, this is my idea. Can you help me get there? and just start connecting with people? I think not limiting ourselves is the biggest, biggest opportunity

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16:45 - 17:35

Josh Crisp

Great words. Go for it. And don't limit yourself on this Monday. Kacie, thank you so much for joining us on this episode. It's been a pleasure having you. Thank you for being an ambassador to our industry and serving on the ambassador team for Bridge the Gap. Appreciate all the work you do and all the ambassadors.

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It's almost that time of year. you'll be seeing our ambassador applications pop up on social, and we hope that you'll take an opportunity to do that. Kacie. Thank you for joining us. We are going to connect our audience to you in our show notes. And then on our website, MTG voice.com, for all of our listeners. You can also view us on a variety of different channels and see Kacie and connect with her. Thank you all for listening to another great episode of Bridge the Gap.

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17:35 - 17:46

Outro

Thanks for listening to Bridge the Gap podcast with Josh and Lucas. Connect with the BTG network team and use your voice to influence the industry by connecting with us at btgvoice.com.

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