Over the past few years, the person-centered care movement has begun to sweep the senior living industry. For residents and caregivers, person-centered care is a wholly positive shift — away from the image of cold, sterile senior living environments of yesteryear and toward warm, inviting atmospheres in which individual dignity is respected.
If your community has implemented person-centered care or is in the process of implementing it, you know it’s a complex concept involving every aspect of your organization. It’s also not so easy to describe in a few words of well-crafted marketing copy. What are some strategies you can use in your marketing efforts to fully explain the value that person-centered care brings to residents?
Get Personal
As the name suggests, person-centered care is about individuals. To fully communicate the value of person-centered care, you’ll need to see life from the perspective of an individual resident.
For someone living in assisted living or skilled nursing, what does person-centered care mean on a daily basis? How does it change the daily routine? Many seniors fear losing their independence and ability to choose when they move into senior living; person-centered care attempts to return some of that control to the individual.
In real terms, it means that if you hate waking up early, you can sleep in and not worry that you might miss breakfast. It means you get to choose when you want a bath. It means you make decisions about your own care, and it means you have the right to determine how staff members can best meet your needs.
On your website, in print collateral, on social media and elsewhere in your marketing efforts, make it clear that person-centered care is about choice, and try to see the end result from the perspective of a resident.
Update Your Mission
Person-centered care is so important to your organization, and it’s such a huge change from the past, that your corporate mission should reflect your commitment. Mutual respect, understanding and the individual’s right to choose are central tenets of person-centered care, and they should be clearly stated from the highest level of your organization.
If your community has implemented or is implementing person-centered care, your mission statement should spell out the new focus. The corporate mission for your community plays a significant role in your marketing, because it tells your prospects what you value and hold dear.
Any updates to your mission statement should be announced to prospects, residents, family members, staff and members of the greater community.
Use Case Studies
Developing a commitment to person-centered care requires a sustained commitment from organizations; it’s not a one-and-done event. Executives, administrators, clinical personnel, caregivers and others in your organization must be fully committed to the concepts of resident choice and dignity for person-centered care to work.
Context — including your community’s physical environment and workplace culture — also makes a difference in successfully using person-centered care.
Because person-centered care requires so many moving parts working together over time, it can be difficult to describe. By developing case studies that look at individual situations from the perspective of residents and various team members, you can put together a cohesive picture of what person-centered care means in your organization.
Tout Successes
Person-centered care, implemented correctly, has the advantage of measurable results that you can use in your marketing. Research has found that person-centered care in medical settings improves clinical outcomes, along with the satisfaction rates of patients. Hospital stays become shorter, drugs are used less frequently, and expensive tests are ordered less often.
In your community, work with your medical director to track the metrics that improve over time — perhaps it’s a reduced rate of falls, residents living longer, fewer hospitalizations or other positive outcomes.
Ask Residents What They Think
In studies, individuals who receive patient-centered care report less discomfort, improved emotional health, and fewer medical tests and referrals. Since patient-centered care is, after all, about the patient, consider conducting resident surveys that solicit feedback — and use those positive reports in your marketing.
Stress the Holistic Approach
As the health-conscious baby boomers begin to enter senior living, marketing representatives will increasingly be called on to explain their communities’ dedication to overall wellness. Person-centered care focuses heavily on a holistic approach that includes a number of aspects of overall well-being: physical, spiritual, emotional, creative, social and intellectual.
By explaining this holistic approach in your marketing materials, you can stress your community’s commitment to supporting and enhancing the quality of life for every resident.
Define Person-Centered Care for Your Community
Person-centered care is about providing residents with independence, autonomy and choice — and respecting their dignity and privacy.
How it looks in practice, though, will vary significantly. By defining what person-centered care means in your community, you can reach out to prospective residents with a meaningful message that communicates true value at a personal level.