Learning Management System---this LMS known within HHP as e-Source, is a learning environment which allows employees access to information, policies, procedures and documents that deal with HHP programs in use along with those soon to be implemented. e-Source will also be used for onboarding new and reboarding present employees. In addition, e-Source provides content for twenty-five courses of study, some of which fulfill CEU requirements. Additional courses will be added to e-Source as they are developed. Also, e-Source maintains a record of every employee who accesses information provided, which courses are reviewed and the amount of time devoted by each employee to the material. Plus, it has the capacity for pre and post study testing. In this way management can be assured that necessary training is taking place.  

 Appropriate and timely levels of training and education have been established so that employees can “Learn Their Stripes” by reaching successive levels of competence for their job description or, if they choose, seek knowledge in order to prepare for new opportunities.

This system along with the twenty-five courses already developed will be available to all employees by March 16, 2009.

Budget/Planning System: designed to make financial planning and management easier and faster, this system is now in use. Individual assumptions, such as the number of admissions, number of skilled nursing and therapy visits per episode, LUPA percentage, recertification percentage and HHRG rates can be made for each agency, month by month, and automatically consolidated. Any specific or group of assumptions drive interrelated changes throughout the model. This allows for rapid completion of “what if” modeling generating best case, worst case and middle case forecasts. The system can also be used as a training tool to teach managers the financial impact of management decisions, whether planned or inadvertent.

Benefits to the organization from implementing this suite of systems are many. In addition to reducing costs and streamlining operations, HHP plans to use these systems to make possible the opening of “Virtual Offices” (VO). Such offices, already permitted in Texas and other states, will operate as satellites of existing licensed parent or branch offices and will consist of only caregivers led by a senior clinician charged with coordinating care management for a geographic area. With overhead costs limited to no more than a two or three hundred square foot office, computer, telephone and desk, VOs will rely on sponsoring offices for all support functions.

This low cost model will allow HHP to serve markets until now considered too small to support full scale branches or too far from a licensed office to make operational support practical. Given that Texas and many other states no longer approve new branch office applications, this model will provide growth opportunities not otherwise available while more effectively leveraging the indirect cost structure of existing full service offices. HHP’s VitalPartners 365 service will be heavily promoted in any new market as a service differentiator. Additionally, HHP plans to provide VO clinicians with its distinctively wrapped “Zebra” car so that the target community quickly learns of HHP’s presence.

Management believes that in coming years CMS will implement rate cuts (perhaps a series of cuts) which will exert margin financial pressure on all homecare providers. In spite of this, HHP should experience only modest and temporary margin compression from such cuts because of the systems being implemented, coupled with the VO model under construction. For the same reasons, HHP should benefit from an industry consolidation which is likely to occur since many agencies, not well positioned, will find it impossible to adjust to a rapidly changing environment. One secret of success is having above average tools because they do attract and retain above average people.

Planning to BE the future, not just part of it!