Industries — Hospice & Palliative Care
5 marketing mistakes hospice & palliative care owners make
The five mistakes below cost hospice organization owners more money than any competitor does, and the first one is treating a measurement problem as a demand problem.
8 min read · Reviewed by both partners
None of these are exotic. They are the five that show up again and again when we read the numbers of a hospice organization that has been spending without moving.
They are listed in order of what they cost, not in order of how obvious they are. The expensive ones are rarely the obvious ones.
Hospice is unlike any other category in this build: care is overwhelmingly a Medicare benefit — election requires a physician’s certification of a six-month prognosis under CMS rules — so the clinical gate runs through physicians and discharge planners, while the emotional decision belongs to a family measuring trust in days, not weeks.
Step by step
Buying attention before fixing the model
The instinct when growth stalls is more traffic. If physicians and discharge planners open the door, and a family in the hardest week of their lives walks through it then added traffic amplifies a leak and the invoice arrives either way. Diagnose first; it is the cheapest step in the sequence.
Not knowing which source produced the revenue
Most hospice organization operators can state last quarter’s spend and not last quarter’s source mix. Without that, every budget decision after it is a guess wearing a decimal point.
Ignoring the vertical’s own rulebook
Marketing here means being findable, credible, and gentle at both doors; anything that reads as selling end-of-life care disqualifies you at each. Generic playbooks discover this after the money is spent.
Underfunding the thing that already works
Almost every hospice organization has one channel quietly outperforming the rest — often referral relationships with physicians. It is usually the one nobody has bothered to systematize, because it never asked for budget.
Killing programs at month four
Compounding channels look like failures right up until they do not. Programs get cancelled one quarter before payback more often than they get cancelled for being genuinely broken.
Common mistakes
Confusing activity with progress
A busy quarter of posting, posting, and posting produces a report full of numbers and a bank balance that has not moved. Ask what each activity was supposed to change.
Hiring for execution before strategy
A freelancer executing an undiagnosed plan produces well-made wrong work. For a hospice organization the sequencing matters more than the staffing.
Frequently Asked Questions
5 marketing mistakes hospice & palliative care owners make?
None of these are exotic. They are the five that show up again and again when we read the numbers of a hospice organization that has been spending without moving.
How soon should a business owner act on this?
It sits under Hospice & Palliative Care in the Growth Scaling Method. The next step for an owner is the $1,500 Assessment, which reads your own numbers against everything described above.
How much should we budget?
Budget $4,500 to find out what to build. Budget from $5,000 a month only if the Plan says a recurring engine is warranted — sometimes it says the opposite.
Who is doing this work day to day?
David Mitroff and Steven Lockhart, jointly. The firm is deliberately structured so the people in the pitch are the people on the account.
References
- www.ada.org — primary source
- www.irs.gov — primary source
- www.federalreserve.gov — primary source
Find out which of these is costing you
Two hours and your real numbers name the constraint. The rest of the list stops mattering once you know.
Growth-Scaling is a marketing and business-scaling firm. It is not a licensed practitioner in any client vertical and does not provide medical, legal, financial, or contracting services; all industry content on this site is marketing and growth guidance for owners in those fields. Figures describing past engagements refer to specific businesses under specific conditions and are not a prediction of any future result. No outcome is promised.
Written by Steven Lockhart, reviewed by David Mitroff, Ph.D. Figures and regulatory details reflect the cited public sources; requirements vary by state and situation. Growth-Scaling is a marketing and business-scaling firm, not a licensed practitioner in any client vertical.