By Steve Moran

Here’s what I get asked all the time:

“How can I best achieve my profit margins?”

“Is anyone making money during COVID?”

“How can I make a higher margin on services?”

Big, important questions . . . no doubt. And they are questions that keep leaders up at night.

There is Good News

The good news is that there are solutions out there. There are ways to boost your bottom line and achieve financial goals, even during these uncertain and unstable times.

Recently I was chatting with Eldermark CEO Craig Patnode about his service model optimization that helps clients achieve previously unthought-of profits, which is doing crazy good things for operator bottom lines. 

The Approach

His approach is to offer operators a time study assessment that demonstrates to communities their actual cost of care. This is critical to figuring out if you are even getting close to achieving desired margins.

“When we work with clients to optimize their care process, we routinely can unearth hundreds of thousands of dollars lost in annual service creep and missed service revenue opportunities,” said Patnode. “We help our clients achieve up to 30 percent profit margins or more all the time thanks to our ability to identify gaps and missed opportunities. We can identify residents with high-acuity services and align that community’s staffing to make a higher margin on services.”

Patnode walked me through the time-study process, which, in many ways, resembles a more modern, polished version of the traditional building “assessment”:

  1. Database & service model gets optimized for effective and efficient workflow
  2. Caregiver workflow is monitored and the data collected
  3. That data analysis then informs an “opportunities action plan” with feedback teaching 
  4. This implemented plan achieves optimized, efficient care and bottom-line success

I’ve spent a lot of time with both Patnode and his robust Eldermark Software platform and the powerful technology is both seamless and powerful, an essential combination for an industry that craves meaningful insights and accessibility. There’s a reason that Patnode and his team have been pioneers in this field for nearly three decades.

“I know this is a challenging time in our industry,” said Patnode.But the good news is that with our time-study analysis, financial success is a virtual certainty.

Patnode has personally invited our readers to try the time-study on for size and see what kind of outcomes it can unearth for you and your communities.