Posted by Will Hicklen on Thu, Sep 09, 2010 @ 01:32 PM
As a reminder, you can register to receive automatic email notices when new entries are posted to Ankota’s Healthcare Delivery Management blog. Simply look to the right side of this page and you will see the place to enter your email address. No other information is needed. I am excited to report that our registrations and readership have more than DOUBLED over the last month. So, if you are one of the people who have passed along the link or posted it on your own blog—we thank you very much!
Now, on to today’s post about Leadership…
A couple of great pieces on the topic of Leadership hit my inbox today and I thought I would pass them along. Rather than analyzing or summarizing each, I will tell you what I like about the article or the site and provide the link so you can read it directly. Enjoy!
1) 10 Things Good Managers Believe on bNet, by Steve Tobak, a well known business strategist and executive coach. bNet is part of the CBS interactive business network, focused on business issues that Home Health Care, DME, Infusion, RT and other home care related companies might find very useful.
2) Tobak’s article draws from another piece that I really like, 12 Things Good Bosses Believe, by Robert Sutton. Sutton writes on leadership for Harvard Business Review and is the author of books such as his newly released Good Boss, Bad Boss (click on the book cover below to see on Amazon.com)
3) Leadership & Perfectionism, by Mike Myatt, Chief Strategy Officer for N2growth. Myatt poignantly acknowledges, “This may be difficult for some to get their heads around, but perfectionism is not a leadership trait.” My natural tendency is to be a bit of a perfectionist in business, but I am much more effective and accomplish more when I’m not. Maybe you are the same way. Either way, this piece might provoke some thought.
Posted by Will Hicklen on Tue, Sep 07, 2010 @ 12:00 PM
Home Health and Private Duty agencies might share this with their clients or repost on their own web sites.
Caring for an elderly parent consumes tremendous time and effort and is often an emotional and financial drain. No matter how devoted they are, family members have limited time and proximity is often a challenge.
Here are some helpful ideas from CNN Money magazine, “4 Tips for Caring for Mom and Dad,” and ways to manage family communications from Ankota. Additional resources are listed below.
It is estimated that 7 million Americans care for an elderly relative from a distance. 48% of them have to use sick or vacation days, and 38% report that they have to stop or reduce their savings during this time, according to the National Alliance for Caregiving (NAC). The same study reports that long-distance caregivers spend an average of $8700 per year providing support, roughly twice as much as nearby relatives.
CNN Money Tips:
1) Know Mom’s Needs. Things to look out for: “You’re looking for significant changes from normal patterns,” says Donna Wagner, a gerontology professor at Towson University.
2) Create a DIY Plan. Identify local friends or family who can help, and put together a checklist . Local grocery delivery might be useful, for example.
3) Get Low-Cost Help.
4) Bring on a Professional.
More on getting help or hiring a professional: Personal Care or “Private Duty” Aids range from $15-30/hour and are ideal for helping with things like cooking, housekeeping, baths, and so on. Nurses can be hired through Private Duty and Home Health care companies in your area for those who need medical care.
For more comprehensive help, a geriatric care manager can be hired. You might check out Caring For Your Parents by Elinor Ginzler of AARP. Ginzler’s article The Cost of Caregiving on AARP’s website is also an excellent resource.
Ankota Tip About Caregiver-to-Family Communications:
In focus groups sponsored by Ankota, a recurring frustration among family members is the inconsistency of communications from caregivers to family members. This should not be left only to phone calls and the bill should not be a primary means of communication. Family members should insist on regular electronic updates. Technology like Ankota’s FamilyConnect ensures secure and consistent, proactive communications that leverage text messaging and email, and provide a family portal.
By staying informed and on top of things, family members can alleviate some of the stress that comes along with caring for an aging parent.
Resources:
FamilyConnect from Ankota automates repetitive communications between caregivers and family members. All home health and private duty agencies should use some form of communicating like this.
Informal Caregiving by and for Older Adults by Donna Wagner, Professor of Gerentology and Health Sciences, Towson University, Towson, Maryland.
Lotsa Helping Hands is a free, private, web-based community that can also help organize family and friends.
The Cost of Caregiving an article by Elinor Ginzler on AARP’s web site
Caring for Your Parents a book written by Elinor Ginzler
Learn more about using checklists in these two recent Ankota articles: The Checklist Manifesto and Checklists Improve Quality of Care
BeClose Simple, unobtrusive home monitoring provides real-time, remote activity monitoring in the home.
Posted by Ken Accardi on Tue, Sep 07, 2010 @ 08:11 AM
We often blog about "Aging in Place Technologies" and the reason is that we beleive that these technologies represent an opportunity for home care companies to do two things: 1) keep abreast of what's available (and often marketed direct to consumers and their families) and 2) Look for ways to grow your businesses with this technology. As an example, two weeks ago we did a blog post entitled Wired Homes for Tracking the Elderly: A private Duty Differentiator that you can read here. That post talked about home monitoring solutions that families are considering in lieu of private duty care, but then outlined a way that you can in fact grow your business by embracing the technology.
Today we bring you an update from Laurie Orlov, who is an expert consultant in all matters related to aging in place. She publishes a blog at http://ageinplacetech.com. Below is a sample of her research and writing with information to connect you to her site.
Aging in Place Technology Watch August Newsletter
by Laurie Orlov
August was a bonanza of buzz, buzz, buzz. Usually August is a snoozer (and a slow news month) in the business world, what 
with vacations and organizational regrouping. But beginning with the August 3 Intel-GE Joint Venture announcement that fueled hope and speculation about accelerating intentions, more activity and media tracked right behind. During August, Great Call announced a new Jitterbug medication reminder service, Healthsense received a round of investment led by Radius Ventures, a $1.3 billion M-Health market sizing got Qualcomm and AT&T excited. Or maybe that that was 'mHealth' -- Best Buy (re)surfaced with health-related stuff in stores. Within the general what's-it-all-mean confusion, more press followed last month's NY Times series -- this time NPR offered up a series on aging and technology as well. Never one to shut up, I offered my own 'bah humbug' assessment of the assessment.
Alzheimer's hype, hope, oops...reality. Speaking of saturated media coverage, August was a month in which the unsuspecting might actually think an Alzheimer's revolution was at hand. Following July's news of amending (expanding) criteria as to what consitutes the disease, next came identification of biomarkers as possible early warning indicators. But stay cautious about remedies and prevention: see yesterday's NY Times published the NIH jury and Duke 'meta' study -- a study of all previously published studies about what's proven and what's not. The short answer about the various prevention and remedies studied to date -- the answer: NOT PROVEN. Implication? New criteria potentially broadens the population beyond the current 5 million, diagnosis is potentially going to be at an earlier age, and nothing has been proven to work at staving off or curing the disease. To me, this signals an opportunity to create or re-purpose smarter GPS and geo-fencing apps (not just technologies) to prevent wandering, not just find those who are lost -- and while we're at it, let's see some studies that prove which ones work best and under what conditions. We're going to need them.
And how long before the iPad solves everything? Ah well, sigh, I guess it will be just a bit longer, judging from the Nielsen study noting that only 15% of iPad buyers are over age 56. I bet that even those (no demographics to prove) are not that much over, either. And will the smart phone be the remote monitoring and fall detection device of choice, meaning all others rest? Not in the near term -- seniors aren't buying or using them either. So for all those who ask about this -- I doubt it. Remember, Apple doesn't even want admit to marketing to baby boomers!. And carriers express interest and even dabble a bit here and there, but invest little or nothing in marketing. So in the meantime, keep on keeping on with solutions for the foreseeable future. When there's a big change, you can read it on this site early and often.
And for those who might be running around here and there like I will be in the fall -- look on the left side of the website at http://www.ageinplacetech.com for a list of events.
For any of you who are interested in aging in place technologies and who will be in the Boston area on September 23rd, Ankota helped organize a great event featuring Laurie. You can learn more and sign up at http://silvertsunami.eventbrite.com/.
Ankota provides software to improve the delivery of care outside the hospital. Today Ankota services home health, private duty care, DME Delivery, RT, Physical Therapy and Home Infusion organizations, and is interested in helping to efficiently manage other forms of care. To learn more, please visit www.ankota.com or contact Ankota.
Posted by Ken Accardi on Fri, Aug 27, 2010 @ 10:15 AM
Today's post is reprinted with permission from Home Health Care Today. Copyright 2010 Stephen C. Tweed. To receive a FREE subscription to this newsletter, log on to www.leadinghomecare.com.
Well, it's official. After five months of discussion, questions, 
debate, seminars, workshops and webinars, the bottom line is that Health Care Reform is here, it's huge, and it will have a major impact on all of health care in America. We've continued to study the law and monitor the development of regulations needed to implement the law. Here are a few things that have happened that may affect your home health agency, hospice, or private duty home care business.
The 1099 Rule
A little-noticed provision in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is suddenly generating a lot of attention. The new rule requires all businesses to file 1099 forms if they purchase $600 or more in goods or services from another business during a year. While the rule was largely overlooked in the early analysis of the health-care law, a recent uproar has put it in the spotlight, and efforts are now under way in Congress to repeal the measure.
Formerly, only unincorporated businesses that purchased services greater than $600 in a year were required to file a 1099 with the Internal Revenue Service and with the provider. The new rule extends the requirement to all companies, charities, and state and local governments. It also expands the provision to include purchases of goods or products.
For example, if a business buys more than $600 in office supplies from Staples over the course of a year, it will now have to send a 1099 to Staples and file another one with the IRS. Or, if you buy an airplane ticket to fly to the NAHC convention and it costs more than $600, you'll need to get the taxpayer ID number for your airline, figure out where to send the 1099, and file a copy with the IRS.
We suspect that this provision of the law will be revised, as neither the Congress or the IRS fully understood the unintended consequences of this tiny provision in the law. I'm sure we'll find other provisions like this that have major unintended consequences.
American confidence in ability to pay for Healthcare declines.
Americans' confidence in their ability to pay for and access health care has fallen by 5 percent since December 2009, according to a Thomson Reuters poll of consumer confidence released Monday, (8/23/10).
The monthly survey questions 3,000 consumers about their ability to pay for health care. According to Reuters, "On every survey question, responses were more pessimistic in July than they were in December."
New York state now has an active Pre-existing Condition Insurance Plan (PCIP), the NY Bridge Plan.
In July, New York officials said they were hoping the New York PCIP program premiums would be less than $600 per month. The actual premiums will be just $362 per month in upstate counties and $421 per month in downstate counties, including counties in New York City, officials say.
The initial plan design includes a $20 office visit co-payment, a $500 co-payment per inpatient stay and a $100 emergency room co-payment, officials say. The package also includes pharmacy benefits and vision care benefits.
The NY Bridge Plan administrators will process applications on a first-come, first-service basis, officials say. The earliest coverage can take effect is October 1. Once the NY Bridge Plan reaches capacity, administrators will set up a waiting list.
The federal Affordable Care Act (ACA) - the legislative package that includes the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act - allocated $5 billion to the PCIP to fill in coverage gaps that will exist before a ban on medical underwriting takes effect in 2014.
The PCIP program is supposed to provide "uninsurable" individuals access to coverage at rates comparable to individual rates in the commercial market. The program is open to individuals with serious pre-existing conditions who have been uninsured for at least 6 months. Some states are letting the new federal Office of Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight run their PCIP programs, but a majority will be running their own risk plans. New York is expecting to use $297 million in PCIP funding to provide temporary coverage for about.
Only two people enroll in New Jersey Plan.
New health plans for the sick and uninsured that became available as a result of federal health care reform have been slow to enroll patients: just two people in New Jersey will begin receiving coverage today, the first day the plans take effect.
Called NJ Protect, the health plans are available to people who have been without insurance for at least six months and submit evidence of pre-existing health conditions, such as diabetes, hypertension or cancer. New Jersey is to receive $141 million in federal subsidies to cover claims that exceed the premiums paid by the beneficiaries.
Most small businesses in California qualify for Tax Credit.
Garnering little to no press attention when released in July, a report undertaken by Families USA and the Small Business Majority found that 80 percent of California's small businesses with 25 or fewer employees will qualify for federal tax credits under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act starting this year.
This means that of the state's 571,200 small businesses, 465,500 are eligible for the tax credits in 2010. Of those, 30 percent - or 135,900 - qualify for the maximum tax credit amount.
Stay tuned to Home Health Care Today and Private Duty Today for more new developments in the implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
Ankota provides software to improve the delivery of care outside the hospital. Today Ankota services home health, private duty care, DME Delivery, RT, Physical Therapy and Home Infusion organizations, and is interested in helping to efficiently manage other forms of care. To learn more, please visit www.ankota.com or contact Ankota.
Posted by Will Hicklen on Tue, Aug 24, 2010 @ 02:09 PM
I saw a thought provoking piece about elder mediation and home care, posted on LinkedIn this morning by Rob McClenehan of Right At Home. If you are a member of LinkedIn, you can read his post here, and perhaps also join the Home Health & Hospice Group.
The topic of elder mediation is probably most relevant to our Home Health Care and Private Duty customers, but our Infusion, Respiratory Therapy and Rehab customers might also find it useful. If you are one of these companies, take a look and consider what role elder mediation might play in the future of your clients.
Rob referenced an article called Elder Mediation by Angel Carl, which you can read here on Right At Home’s blog. Right At Home credits an article by Georgia Daniels of Mediate.com. Ms. Daniels is a family mediator and author in Pasadena, CA. From Right At Home’s blog, the article begins:
Eldercare mediation is a growing field that will increase in prominence as the number of elders increases. As parents age, conflicts can erupt between parents and their children over living situations, driving, or the need for more help with daily activities. In addition, conflicts may spring up between siblings about their parents’ aging, such as when it is time for more in-home care, assisted living, or which sibling is responsible for what aspects of a parent’s care. Mediation can also address more complex issues such as estate planning and inheritance or health care choices, and may be used to develop alternatives to conservatorship. Mediation offers an opportunity to explore options and develop the best plan possible for the elder and family. More…
The Role of Home Health and Private Duty Providers
After you have a good plan that the parties support--and a good mediator will help guide you through the planning--the follow through makes it successful. In addition to providing quality care, home care providers can help with this by providing clear and consistent communications on a regular basis. When families feel engaged and informed, tension is mitigated and caregivers can focus their efforts on their client. It's a better result for everyone. Family communications are simple & inexpensive to manage using existing technology. Ankota's FamilyConnect is an example of one simple way to do this. http://www.ankota.com/ankota-family-connect/
As a provider, you might also consider establishing relationships with elder mediators in your area. If the need arises with one of your clients, you will be in a better position to refer to someone confidently. Who knows, some mediators could even develop into referral sources for your business.
The topic of elder mediation continues to gain attention. Click on these images to learn more:
Posted by Will Hicklen on Wed, Aug 18, 2010 @ 12:01 PM
Let's think about PRODUCTIVITY – arguably the single greatest opportunity for your business today.
Ankota is first and foremost a process management company. We develop technology that helps organizations run their Home Health Care and related businesses more efficiently. More profitably. More productively.
What we do is revolutionary because we're the only company that has organized health care into a delivery model and optimized it for performance. That takes some high-powered technology, but all you really need to know at the moment is that it helps you run your business better and achieve immediate results.
Our customers include home health care agencies, HME and DME companies, Private Duty care agencies, and "the therapies" - infusion therapy, physical therapy, occupational therapy, respiratory therapy, and more. If you need to mobilize staff, equipment, medications, and supplies for health care, we’re the experts you trust to help optimize your business.
I would argue that the single greatest business opportunity before these companies--companies like yours--lies with improving productivity. The greatest opportunity to improve profitability lies with better utilizing staff and resources. Relative to other markets, this business has traditionally lacked a performance culture. The market has not demanded it until now, with new pressures on revenues, limited staff, and the ever increasing costs of doing business. The most immediate option is to improve productivity. That is, generate more output with the same or fewer resources. The good news is that there are many opportunities for immediate improvement, spanning from reduction in miles driven to increased utilization of staff and equipment. Downstream benefits abound, such as reduced paperwork, improved record keeping and accountability, happier staff, and so on.
We’ll discuss several of those in subsequent articles here. However, for now, your homework is simple. I’d like to encourage you to think of your Home Health Care, DME, Private Duty or rehab business in terms of productivity. Take a look at the following definition of PRODUCTIVITY and begin to consider it in the context of your business. When you examine your operations or consider new initiatives, consider also how it will impact productivity.
Note that I am not suggesting that quality of care be compromised at all! In fact, quality of care should improve or remain constant to make productivity improvements measurable and valuable. A business with a performance minded culture is one focused on constant improvement. So, while you think about PRODUCTIVITY and your business, think of it in the context of questions like
“How can we improve the consistency of care?”
“Will clients/patients and their families be better off?”
Wikipedia has a clear definition of the word PRODUCTIVITY and includes some great supporting data. Take a look and start to think about productivity in your business.
Productivity is a measure of output from a production process, per unit of input. For example, labor productivity is typically measured as a ratio of output per labor-hour, an input. Productivity may be conceived of as a metric of the technical or engineering efficiency of production. As such, the emphasis is on quantitative metrics of input, and sometimes output. Productivity is distinct from metrics of allocative efficiency, which take into account both the monetary value (price) of what is produced and the cost of inputs used, and also distinct from metrics of profitability, which address the difference between the revenues obtained from output and the expense associated with consumption of inputs.[1] click here for full article in Wikipedia
Another way to look at it... Borrowed from Accel, experts in team productivity, The Productivity Conceptual Modelbelow, takes the form of a 'productivity tree'. The roots denote the inputs to the system, the trunk the conversion process and the foliage and fruits the systems outputs. click on graphic to go to Accel's web site
Posted by Will Hicklen on Wed, Aug 11, 2010 @ 05:14 PM
Brightree’s acquisition of CAU should surprise no one. See full HME News story here
CEO Dave Cormack said it clearly, “Their customer base is right in the sweet spot of our customer base.” Cormack wants to grow by acquisition, consolidate his customer base with others, and expand his services. It is a wise strategy. Other industries have followed this path, and quite frankly, it’s about time that DME & other businesses in the home health care ecosystem do the same.
Consolidation among DME providers will drive a similar consolidation among the companies that develop technology for them. Simply put, there will be fewer deals for the software companies to win. The ones that win will be those that provide the highest business value at the most compelling price, and deliver it in a model that is easy to implement & use. Even so, compared to other industries, DME is still highly fragmented. Just as there are many DME providers, so too are there many software companies selling to them, and none with a dominant market position. That is the definition of a market ripe for consolidation and it is still anyone’s market to win in DME. It will likely take a few years to settle.
So how will this go? The industry has focused long and hard on improving billing practices and decreasing the time it takes to get reimbursed. Companies like Brightree and Care Centric have built businesses that include both billing-related software and actual billing services. The next great opportunity is in using technology to increase business productivity. DME has seen little in the way of productivity improvement in recent years and has suffered through decreasing reimbursements while energy and labor costs continue to rise.
Resource and staff utilization is inefficient in DME, relative to other industries. For example, research conducted by Ankota, Inc. indicates that DME providers can cut operating costs such as mileage and fuel expenses by 25-35% immediately, simply through better scheduling and route planning. The same applies to home health care, respiratory therapy, rehab, and others that depend on home delivery and mobile workforces. Further, the addition of real time, mobile technologies and practices known in other industries as business performance management (BPM) will allow them to better model capacity and use it more efficiently. Technology can improve tracking and accountability, reduce mileage, eliminate paperwork, and improve quality.
The immediate business benefits include more deliveries in less time and at lower costs. Higher revenue. Lower marginal costs. That sounds simple, right?
The software companies that help DME companies actually run their businesses better and more profitably will be the ones that win. If you are a DME company, make software companies prove that they can reduce your operating costs and improve productivity. You should be able to tell whether they have expertise in business performance management and they should be able to prove it.
Those are the ones you can bet on.
Posted by Ken Accardi on Tue, Aug 10, 2010 @ 05:04 PM
When discussing home care technology, this blog is on the leading edge, but unfortunately on the subject of nutrition, I often find myself behind the curve. So writing about nutrition is intended not just for our healthy caregivers initiative, but for self-learning too.
Recently there's been a lot of talk about which is the best 
antioxidant. Is it the wild blue-berry or the red bean? But nobody explains why it matters. So here it is in simple English... Antioxidants help prevent your cells from dying. This means that they can help prevent or delay cancer, heart disease and some effects of aging. Pretty big deal! When cells oxidize (as an aside, rust is a form of oxidization) they release free radicals that are able to cause more oxidization thus leading to a chain reaction. The antioxidants combat this by being oxidized themselves and in the process they remove the harmful free radicals.
There are lots of debates about what the best antioxidant is. Some studies have touted rare and specialty items like Abut it doesn't really matter which is absolutely the best. The important thing is to be aware of the types of foods that provide antioxidants and figure out how to incorporate more into your diets and the diets of the people for whom you provide care. My nutritionist friend KC Hayes recently forwarded me a scholarly article concluding that many affordable berries like strawberries, blueberries and red raspberries may prevent cancer just as well as those in studies (early studies used black raspberries). Here's a link to the story (from the Ohio State University Medical Center). And as you'll remember, KC is a phenomenal photographer so here's one of his recent photos that he shared.
My wife's favorite choice for incorporating antioxidants into her diet is to drink a glass of red wine daily (and here's an article from the Mayo Clinic website backing her up). I think I'll go get her one now...
Ankota provides software to improve the delivery of care outside the hospital. Today Ankota services home health, private duty care, DME Delivery, RT, Physical Therapy and Home Infusion organizations, and is interested in helping to efficiently manage other forms of care. To learn more, please visit www.ankota.com or contact Ankota.
Posted by Ken Accardi on Fri, Jul 30, 2010 @ 07:25 AM
Daniel H. Pink is the author of four provocative books about the changing world of work — including the New York Times bestsellers, A Whole New Mind and Drive, which together have been translated into 28 languages. His research and books are about motivation, and more specifically about debunking the conventional wisdom that money is the best motivator. Instead, he creates a compelling case that the most important motivators are as follows:
- Autonomy - the urge to direct our own lives
- Mastery - the desire to get better at something that matters
- Purpose - The yearning to contribure to something larger than ourselves
If these are the motivators, than we can understand clearly why Home Care can be a fantastic profession.
Dan lays out a fairly compelling set of proof of his argument including the results of scientific experiments and real world examples. One example he uses is about online encyclopedias where he compares and contrasts Microsoft's Encarta - a well managed initiative with pay bonus and incentives, with Wikipedia - an encyclopedia that you contribute to if you're passionate about it and for which you receive no compensation. In Dan's words, "Ten years ago, no sober economist would have predicted that Wikipedia would beat out Encarta", but as we know, it did.
This first video is my favorite of the two. While Dan speaks, a cartoon animator depicts his story. It's 10 minutes long and you can see it by clicking on the picture below.
The second version is a stage presentation given by Dan which is 18 minutes below.
Ankota provides software to improve the delivery of care outside the hospital. Today Ankota services home health, private duty care, DME Delivery, RT, Physical Therapy and Home Infusion organizations, and is interested in helping to efficiently manage other forms of care. To learn more, please visit www.ankota.com or contact Ankota.
Posted by Ken Accardi on Mon, Jul 26, 2010 @ 07:41 AM
One of the bloggers I enjoy is a guy named Seth Godin. He has a great skill for making a compelling point in just a few words. Often when I share an article or research with you, I try to give an executive summary or perhaps share a few of the most compelling key points, but in this case I share the full article with all credit (and links) to Seth Godin's blog.
A hierarchy of failure worth following
Not all failures are the same. Here are five kinds, from frequency = good all the way to please-don't!
FAIL OFTEN: Ideas that challenge the status quo. Proposals. Brainstorms. Concepts that open doors.
FAIL FREQUENTLY: Prototypes. Spreadsheets. Sample ads and copy.
FAIL OCCASIONALLY: Working mockups. Playtesting sessions. Board meetings.
FAIL RARELY: Interactions with small groups of actual users and customers.
FAIL NEVER: Keeping promises to your constituents.
The thing is, in their rush to play it safe and then their urgency to salvage everything in the face of an emergency, most organizations do precisely the opposite. They throw their customers or their people under the bus ("we had no choice") but rarely take the pro-active steps necessary to fail quietly, and often, in private, in advance, when there's still time to make things better.
Better to have a difficult conversation now than a failed customer interaction later.
As we at Ankota strive to innovate, we're never afraid to make mistakes early in the process so that we can get things right when we make promises to our customers and to the industry. And as we've shared, we are dedicated to working with the industry to pioneer new and better ways to deliver care. If you have some ideas and want to partner with a software company that enables your innovation rather than slows you down, let us know - even if you're afraid that your innovation might fail.
Social Media note: In the world of blogging, it is generally acceptable to borrow from articles and blogs of others, but the key is to give credit and provide links into the originating blog. When I borrow from another home care blog, I get permission first, but in the case of a large blog like Seth Godin's blog, I just go for it - making sure to give credit. It's like a "retweet" but bigger.
Ankota provides software to improve the delivery of care outside the hospital. Today Ankota services home health, private duty care, DME Delivery, RT, Physical Therapy and Home Infusion organizations, and is interested in helping to efficiently manage other forms of care. To learn more, please visit www.ankota.com or contact Ankota.