Assisted Living Placements Blog

Hello again from Assisted Living Placements.  I sometimes wonder if anyone is reading these articles.  I certainly hope so, but regardless, they are good for me we are creating at archive of incredibly important information.  With that in mind, I wanted to review a topic that we have covered before.  Assisted living referrals services commonly will disclose private information on clients and their families to multitudes of assisted living communities and homes.  This disturbing trend is a indication of how the assisted  living referral service is doing business.  In fact, this is just a symptom of a much larger problem.  You can be sure that any referral services that utilizes this “blanket notification” does not have your best interest at heart.  This seem odd, but remember, senior citizen client is NOT the customer of the assisted living referral service.  The actual customer is the assisted living community or home.

In previous articles, we have discussed in detail the working of an assisted living referral service.  We have illustrated what goes into evaluating facilities, keeping a database, assessing needs and then matching seniors to facilities.  Soon we will talk about the dynamics of touring, negotiating, moving and follow up.  But the step between meeting the client family and touring the appropriate facilities is very interesting.  It is here, where the good referrals services are separated from everyone else.  As one would expect, the harder the referral agent works, the better the matches between the client and the facilities. 

Referral agents are paid by assisted living facilities when they refer a client, and that client moves in for care.  But with so many referral services competing and families contacting multiple agencies for help, what happens if a facility is contacted by multiple agents for the same client?  Certainly, the facility cannot pay both agents for the referral.  Well, as one would expect, the simplest policy is the one that is used; the first agency to inform the facility of the refer is considered to be the referring agency and any referral fee that comes due is issued to that party.

Therefore, it becomes a business necessity for the referral agency to inform potential facilities of their referral.  Usually, this is done on the phone, person to person, or by what is known as a “fax face sheet”.  Now, here is a question.  What is the best way to insure that your company will receive a referral fee when you are contacted by a new client?  Obviously, the most effective thing to do would be to inform every facility that you work with of the new client as soon as possible.  Of course, the facilities are going to became very impatient with your agency if they are receiving hundreds of notifications when very few of them are appropriate for their care.  Therefore, the facilities will request contact information on the clients to they can attempt to sell to them.

But imagine this, a client, in a time of desperation, contacts a referral service for help.  To help insure a referral fee, the agent gives this client’s contact information, personal information, to many facilities.  It will not be long before the client is inundated by calls from these hungry facilities.  Talk about giving assisted living referral companies a bad name!  Unfortunately, this is the norm rather than exception.  In fact, every company that I am aware of uses this nasty tactic.  In fact, some referral services do not even qualify their lists before they send out private information.  This means that families will be getting sales calls from facilities that cannot even meet their needs.  So you see, now the family is in worse shape than if they had never contacted a referral service at all.

Let me make perfectly clear that Assisted Living Placements does not participate in this malicious practice, nor condone it in anyway.  Companies that operate in this way have only one priority; money.  They have no interest in the well being of their clients.  Their only objective is to make money and that takes precedence over the well being of the senior citizen.  It is because of these unscrupulous companies, that some families are hesitant to reach out for help when they really need it.  These companies should be ashamed of themselves. 

Ironically, it is because of Assisted Living Placements commitment to the security and well being of our clients, we will not share personal contact information with any facilities, without the clients’ permission.  Even when we explain this to the facilities, they still hound us for the information and become irate and impatient.  In fact, the marketing director at one community, Westminster Terrace in Westminster California, insisted that we give out this private information and when we refused, became so outraged that she actually tried to cancel our contract.  Unfortunately for her, she did not have the authority to accomplish her goal.  I am happy to report that the rest of the staff at Westminster Terrace does not share this selfish and shortsighted mindset. 

Let’s reserve this topic for more study another day.  It really does cut to the heart of something I see as a great problem in this industry.  Until next time, Kindest Regards!