Imagine you have two candidates for a senior leadership position in your organization. Both have a lengthy history in the LTC pharmacy industry, while one candidate has extensive experience across a broad range of healthcare specialties. All things being otherwise equal, which candidate would be more attractive? If you chose the one with broad experience, you would not be alone.
Now, imagine you were a potential customer and were searching for an LTC pharmacy. Which option would be more attractive: the one with long experience in institutional pharmacy, or one whose leaders were well-versed in delivering services across the spectrum of healthcare specialties? Wouldn’t the consultant with a wider variety of exposure to different healthcare venues be more appealing? Wouldn't you prefer to be the candidate with the broader experience?
Competition in LTC pharmacy continues to be intense. Getting an edge has never been more important. Cross training your mind to gain insights across the healthcare spectrum is one area over which you have control.
If you’ve been involved in managing a long-term care pharmacy for any length of time you are already an expert in such topics as the Medicare drug benefit, Medicaid drug coverage, and the special rules that determine how your pharmacy gets paid.
As a professional, you keep up to date with new state and federal policies and create your own compliance plans to ensure that you can continue to operate effectively in today’s environment. Your peers in the industry do exactly the same thing. This is what it takes to be an LTC pharmacy.
If you want to add value to your current customers and residents and expand the number of potential patients, you will need to expand your knowledge base. Let’s consider this the equivalent of cross training.
How well do you know the rules under which nursing homes get paid in Medicare and Medicaid? Understanding the elements of Medicare Part A’s Patient-Driven Payment Model (PDPM) gives you an understanding of how your nursing home clients get paid by Medicare, and helps you understand how pharmacies can help their clients manage their medication regimens under the payment formula. Medicaid doesn’t contribute much revenue to the average LTC pharmacy, but it is among the largest sources of payment for nursing homes.
Interested in expanding beyond institutional LTC to home-based care settings? Might be worth studying the Medicare Home Health payment methodology. This is a prospective payment model that is unique to home care patients and has its own unique case-mix adjustments. Although the model has similarities to the PDPM, it is built for the special circumstances surrounding home-based care.
Understanding how state and federal health programs pay providers is a good starting point, but understanding the issues providers struggle with and how government policies pose challenges and opportunities is equally important. How these industries are adapting to the challenges not only adds to your knowledge, but also helps you re-think how these approaches might offer new ideas for your pharmacy.
Connecting with professionals in other healthcare settings expands your network, opening up new opportunities to collaborate with other providers to solve problems that affect you and your customers.
Opportunities for connecting are readily available. Consider engaging with your state home health trade groups, hospital associations, hospice, and dialysis centers. Professionals in these fields are often happy to discuss industry issues with you and will also benefit from the unique knowledge you possess that can help them.
Organizations where learning is encouraged and facilitated tend to out-perform those that don’t. Companies such as Microsoft, Google, and Coca Cola have big investments in keeping their employees engaged through learning. Employees crave opportunities to burnish their skills through regular educational activities.
So, if cross training can increase your chance of landing more accounts and keeping your employees engaged, maybe it’s worth taking a look at how to get started.
