Hospice nurses required to take marketing territory?

[jlynn2303]

Hi,

The nurses at my for-profit hospice are now required to have marketing territories on top of our other duties. We are responsible for getting the facilities to give us admissions. We are supposed to be sales people. If I had wanted to be a marketer, if I had thought i had the talent, personality or ability to be a marketer or a sales person, I would have gotten my MBA, not my RN. I am terrible at selling things. None of the nurses has any clue what we are supposed to be doing except bringing in admissions. Our marketing person no longer does this. They took the facilities and doctors from her and gave them to us. We have had no training. Today we were shown a chart that listed (among other things) facilities where once upon a time we had an admission, but where we do not currently have any patients (most are contracted with another hospice). No instruction, nothing. Just the implication that the nurses are supposed to convince the building to give us admissions. they keep raising our expected/target census, even though we were not meeting the old census expectations, and have never, except for a brief period where a bunch of people who were not appropriate, were admitted (they later had to be taken off.). We stay around the same census we have been at since we opened several years ago, but that is not good enough.

Has anyone else had to do this?

[curiousauntie]

What in the world does your marketer do if not market to facilities and doctors? That is the main job description for our marketers. To ask the full time case managers to do this on top of all your other duties is unbelievable. And to add that type of work and then not train you? How are you being paid for this extra work? Or did they just add to your duties and not expect to pay you for it? I am sure you work more than 40 hours a week just doing case management, so adding "sales" to your duties would increase the hours you are working. Most marketers are given a "bonus" for census...are you? If so, that is not quite proper, in my opinion. When the nurse that makes the "sale" to the doctor or facility is the same nurse that needs to certify the patient as eligible for hospice and admits that patient then is able to count that admission toward her "sales" numbers...that is so unethical. Will there be repercussions if you don't meet a "sales" target? I could go on and on...If they want a nurse to do marketing, they should hire a nurse who only does marketing, not admissions, case management or any other nursing duties.

[FLArn]

I have been a hospice nurse for 10 years and have never heard of anything so outrageous. This was never a part of ANY clinical position I have held in ANY setting. (LTC, Home Health or Hospice)