Home Health & Hospice Week

Here's how to attract and keep top talent.

It's a job applicants' market for speech language pathologists. That means that you'll have to sell yourself--and home health--to fill your vacancies.

Stats tell the story: According to a study by the American Speech-Language Hearing Association, 48 percent of the home health agency respondents had one or more unfilled SLP position. Sixty-five percent of those agencies reported that more of these job openings exist than the number of applicants for them, reports a brief on the study from the National Association for Home Care & Hospice.

Reasons: Several factors account for the shortages in home health SLPs, according to the ASHA study, including the following:

•  A lack of qualified SLPs;
•  Non-competitive or unattractive salaries and benefits;
•  Undesirable working conditions; and
•  Undesirable geographic location.

Plus, home health settings in general have recruiting issues ranging from the burden of extended travel to a feeling of being undervalued in the position, the report says.

Combat Shortages With These 5 Solutions

Marketing the perks of home health jobs might seem next to impossible, but if you follow these hidden strategies, you can raise your chances of filling those vacant SLP positions.

1. Offer a high per visit rate. "One of my agencies is paying $60 per visit," says Anne Frederick, managing partner for RehabResource--Rehab Recruitment Specialists in Oklahoma City. This may be harder for some agencies, but it is one of the simplest solutions to recruiting and retaining a practitioner.

2. Contract with another practice in your area. Your agency doesn't have to employ the SLP,"reminds Nancy Swigert, ASHA Fellow and president of Swigert & Associates Inc. in Lexington, KY. If you contract with a nearby agency, you can share SLPs, cutting out the cost of new hires.

3. Target the key populations. Some of your prime targets are people who want part-time work or are looking for flexibility in their schedules, Frederick says. For example, try marketing to working mothers. SLPs tend to encompass a larger female population, and many of these women take school jobs so they can be at home with their children in the summers, she adds. So advertise to these SLPs who could be looking for chunks of part-time work in the summer.

4. Take advantage of technology. You can maximize your SLPs' limited time by employing alternative interventions, such as telehealth visits, suggests the NAHC/ASHA report. Telehealth is delivering a visit by way of video and other connections between patients and therapists. This can eliminate travel time and allow therapists to treat more patients in a day.

5. Help expose students to home health settings. Unfortunately, PTs, OTs and SLPs don't have any exposure to home health in school and don't really know what it involves, Frederick says. And starting your first job where you're going into a home setting for the first time can be daunting, Swigert agrees.

The solution: Try partnering with nearby schools to give the students early exposure.

Introduce students to the delivery of services in the home care setting during their training, recommends the NAHC/ASHA report. To see a list of graduate education programs accredited in the areas of audiology and speech-language pathology, go to www.asha.org/gradguide.

Tip: You cannot bill student visits to Medicare, but the students can still make joint visits, assist the agency's SLPs or make independent visits for no-charge sessions, as a volunteer might do, the report explains.