Policy & Procedure Handbook: Is It Worth the Investment?
Oct 23, 2024
Running an assisted living facility is no small feat! From managing day-to-day operations to staying on top of state and federal regulations, you’ve got a lot on your plate. One of the most critical aspects of ensuring smooth sailing is having a solid set of policies and procedures. But the question is, should you create these documents yourself or invest in a professionally crafted set? Let’s dive into the pros and cons to see what's best for your assisted living business!
Check out the video too:
Why You Might Skip Paying for Policies and Procedures
Before you rush to buy a pre-made handbook, let's talk about why doing it yourself might not be a bad idea.
1. It’s All About Customization
Your assisted living facility is unique, right? Whether it’s the size, services, or the personalized care you offer, your policies should reflect that. Buying a generic handbook often means you’ll spend hours tweaking it to fit your specific needs. A 10-bed cozy home will have different procedures compared to a large facility with 50 residents. So, if you’re going to have to rewrite it anyway, why not start from scratch?
2. It’s Not a Set-It-and-Forget-It Thing
Even if you buy a policy template, you can’t just toss it in a drawer and forget about it. You need to dig into the details, understand what’s written, and make changes to suit your facility. You’ll still need to invest time to make sure everything aligns with state and federal guidelines. So, going the DIY route might make more sense.
3. Save Your Wallet Some Heartache
Let’s be real—running a small business means keeping an eye on the budget. Pre-made policy handbooks can run you anywhere from $1,500 to $5,000! If you’re willing to put in the work, creating your own can save a chunk of change. Plus, you’ll gain valuable insights into what makes your facility tick and how to run it like a pro.
4. Become the Guru of Your Own Business
There’s no better way to understand the ins and outs of your business than to write your own policies and procedures. This hands-on approach forces you to learn the regulations that govern assisted living facilities, making you a smarter, more capable business owner. Knowing the rules inside and out means you’ll be ready to adapt if things change in the future.
Why Paying for Policies and Procedures Might Be Worth It
Alright, now let’s talk about why splurging on a set of ready-made policies and procedures could be a smart move for your assisted living business.
1. Time is Money, Baby!
Writing a policy and procedure handbook from scratch could take you weeks—yes, weeks! If researching regulations and drafting legal-sounding documents isn’t your idea of a good time, a pre-made set could save you hours of headaches. Instead of staring at a blank screen, you can use your time to focus on what really matters—running your facility!
2. Tap Into the Experts’ Knowledge
When you buy a handbook from a reputable source, you’re also buying the expertise that comes with it. These companies specialize in assisted living regulations, so you can trust that the documents are up-to-date and ready to roll. Some providers even offer free updates, making sure your policies stay compliant as the rules evolve.
3. Support When You Need It
Many P&P providers don’t just hand over a stack of papers—they also offer consultation services to help you implement everything smoothly. If you’re ever stuck or need some advice, they’re just a call or email away. It’s like having a backup team of experts to help guide you through the legal maze.
4. Peace of Mind with Compliance
Keeping up with healthcare regulations is no joke. Investing in a professional policy and procedure handbook means you can breathe a little easier, knowing that your facility is staying within the lines. It’s like insurance for your business—worth every penny if it means avoiding fines or legal trouble.
5. Building a Long-Term Relationship
A lot of these P&P providers are in it for the long haul. They’ll send you email updates about any new regulations or offer subscription services to keep your handbook fresh. It’s a good way to stay ahead of any compliance issues without doing all the legwork yourself.
6. Ready-Made But Still Customizable
Many of these handbooks come in digital formats, making it super easy to tweak them as needed. Some providers even offer extra customization services so that your policies fit your facility like a glove. It’s like getting a head start with a GPS guiding you!
What’s It Gonna Cost?
The price tag for these pre-made handbooks can vary widely, but expect to spend between $1,000 and $5,000. Sure, it sounds like a lot, but consider it a one-time investment that keeps on giving. Some companies even offer payment plans or subscription services to help manage the cost.
Final Thoughts: Should You Invest or DIY?
The decision to pay for policies and procedures boils down to two things: time and expertise. If you’re short on time but have the cash, buying a ready-made set could save your sanity and help you stay compliant. On the flip side, if you’ve got the time and are willing to learn, writing your own can save you money and make you a more knowledgeable business owner.
No matter which route you choose, having clear policies and procedures is a must for a successful assisted living facility. They’re the blueprint that keeps everything running smoothly, so invest the time or money—whichever works best for you!
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Show full transcript 👇
Transcript
00:00:00
having solid policies and procedures in place is key to running a successful assisted living facility or really any small business but they take a lot of work to really put into place so should you pay for somebody to help you create your own policies and procedures we're going to talk about that in today's video hi everybody i'm brandon gustafson i own and operate two assisted living facilities and i created this channel to help people just like you learn the ins and outs of investing in assisted living
00:00:28
welcome to assisted living investing [Music] hey welcome back to the channel in our last video we talked about what are policies and procedures make sure you watch that video because it's going to give you a lot of context into this video which is going to be around should you be paying for somebody to kind of help you create those policies and procedures should you pay for somebody to give you a policy and procedure handbook we're going to get into that in today's video now before i get into why you should i
00:01:04
want to kind of give you an overview of why you should not pay for policies and procedures for your facility several reasons why you probably don't want to pay for policies and procedures uh and some of those reasons are going to be you know policies and procedures really need to be specific to you and to your business so even if you are paying for something you're going to still want to be spending a lot of time going in and tweaking things to make sure that it's applicable to you and kind of is meeting
00:01:32
your needs because you might be paying somebody to give you a policies and procedure handbook and they have a 50 bed facility and you're just a 10 bed and you know it's it's going to be just completely different so you just want to make sure that you are reviewing anything if you are purchasing it make sure you review it make sure you get a word copy of it so you can go in and make edits that are going to be specific to you so it's it's not going to just be up i paid you know
00:01:56
1 1500 for those policies and procedures and that's it i'm done with it you're still going to have to review it and get familiar with it and make edits that are going to be specific to you another reason would be you know if you have the time and you also have the know-how of writing your own policies and procedures it's likely going to be a better option for you to just build them yourselves because you know exactly you'll then know exactly what each of your policies and procedures are
00:02:25
and you can kind of customize them to meet your needs it lets you be a lot more targeted and specific and how you're building those different policies and procedures out and then you know what you've written and and you can really communicate that to your staff and have something that is working and functioning really really well another reason is purchasing existing policies and procedures purchasing it purchasing it from somebody can be really expensive you're probably looking at somewhere
00:02:53
around 1500 to 2500 for a set of really good base policies and procedures to help you get started so you want to make sure that you have funds in place if you're going to be purchasing this um because it's going to be expensive and you don't want to put yourself in a bad situation where you know you're putting yourself into debt or anything like that to purchase these policies and procedures you want to make sure that you're in a good spot so you can actually purchase them and and function as a facility and not
00:03:23
go bankrupt so just because you need to get policies and procedures in place so that's something else that you just kind of want to be aware of another reason i would say building your own is is maybe a really good idea is it's going to kind of force you to really research um and figure out what the different policies and procedures are what you need to do and that's going to lead to you being just a better business owner you're going to have a much better understanding of all of the different
00:03:49
rules and regulations where to go what resources you can go to with the state or at the federal level to help you kind of get things up and running it lets you understand all those different rules and regulations that you need to be aware of which is just going to help you be more successful and just help you be aware when a mandated change comes through how it's going to really impact you because you have spent the time and really have ingrained yourself into this process and so that's another reason why
00:04:18
you might consider not purchasing policies and procedures from somebody else i'm going to get into why you should pay for policies and procedures so i give you a bunch of reasons why you should not do it and if you found those reasons to be helpful make sure you smash that like button because it's going to help you out a lot and also make sure you subscribe to the channel because it's going to help other people find this information as they're trying to get up and running and operating in
00:04:42
their facilities so let's get into this why you should pay for policies and procedures it's going to save you a ton of time putting in the amount of time that is required to build out your own policies and procedures is just a mountain of time it's going to take you probably a good solid 40 to 80 hours of just entrenched working on it type of work and it's know maybe you really like writing long regulatory type documents and if you do good on you um i personally don't and it's hard and i've worked in regulatory
00:05:20
in medical devices in the past um not my cup of tea so um it's going to save you a ton of time if you're going to purchase it from somebody so something you really want to look into and and consider it could save you hundreds of hours like i and i'm not even kidding it could save you a mountain load of time if you are purchasing it from somebody else um and that's because somebody else has kind of already done that work for you and you get to kind of pick up where they left off so you still and i
00:05:49
mentioned this a little bit earlier when you're purchasing something you are still going to be reading those policies and procedures you still need to get familiar with them but somebody else has done all the big long leg work and now you're just kind of looking at it reviewing it yeah i really agree with this i need to tweak it a little bit here you're doing those things and it's just going to allow you to kind of be successful while also saving you a ton of time another reason is that
00:06:14
many of the companies that are building out these different policies and procedures they are building really good policies and procedures and investing the time to make sure that they are up to the most current state and and federal regulations to help you be successful and to me all of those different requirements and they're doing this because they want to have a good reputation in the marketplace because it allows other you know it's part of their business model if they put out a good product more
00:06:43
people are going to buy it and then they make more money and you refer it out to other people and things like that so they generally are going to be invested in wanting to put out a good quality product for you that's going to meet the needs of the different people around them so you're not getting you know sam down the down the street he's not putting this together you're getting generally a professional organization putting this process together these policies and procedures that's going to
00:07:10
be well researched and meet all the needs that you need for your facility so you're able to hit all of those check marks that the state is going to require of you as you're putting in those policies and procedures something else to kind of just take note of is oftentimes when you are purchasing those policies and procedures you kind of get some consultant work um attached to it as well there it's it's not uncommon that you will have uh when you purchase it from somebody else they're
00:07:44
going to give you a little bit of resources probably not like a full dedicated consultant coming in like we've talked about in a previous video that i'll link up above but you're going to get somebody that kind of does come in and helps you out a little bit as you start building things out and start really implementing those new policies and procedures these companies are going to be answered be able to answer at a high level some of the questions that you have and you know for a little bit of a fee they can probably
00:08:11
help you customize the policies and procedures to meet your specific facility needs i mentioned you know this the example where they may have written it for a 50 bed facility in your 10 bed facility if you paid them an extra 2 3 500 they might be willing to work with you to make slight tweaks to the base policies and procedures to match up with what you have or you're able to ask them and say hey you guys wrote this um to be for a 50-bed facility i'm just a 10 bed facility what are some of the areas that
00:08:42
i need to really dig into and tweak that are going to be a little more specific to me um so it just kind of gives you that frame of mind and you're going to have access to them because they want to make sure like i just mentioned that they are giving you a really good product so that they can continue to thrive with their business model purchasing policies and procedures from another company is also going to help you start building a relationship with that company which is going to be really helpful um especially as just
00:09:11
rules and regulations are constantly changing and things like that they're going to be a really good resource for you to help make sure that your policies and procedures are up to date with the most current rules and regulations they might have a mailing list that you can get on um that says hey in 2022 this new regulation is coming out make sure you have this policy you can buy it from us or you can build it yourself but here's the cfr here's the the different rules and regulations that kind of govern that
00:09:37
thing so you can go and reference it and build it out for yourself um it's likely that they're going to have some kind of a system in place that's going to allow you to do that and that relationship is going to really help you out in the long run to make sure you're just kind of up to date with all the current rules and regulations as they are constantly changing that's just the nature of working in healthcare everything changes all the time and it's okay you just have to learn how
00:10:00
to deal with them and another big reason why you would consider uh purchasing it is you're probably going to be getting a digital copy and a hard copy a lot of these companies will print off all the binders for you and ship it out to you um which is good and bad you know if you need to make tweaks to it you're gonna have to go into that digital copy that you're getting and make the tweaks pull out the previous policy and procedure and put the new one in but still saving you a ton of time of putting all of
00:10:28
those binders binders together because that's a lot of work a lot of work to kind of put those five to ten binders binders together and build out what you need for your for your facility so that's just another really good thing that you want to kind of keep in mind as you're building that out they're doing a lot of that just leg work grunt work that can take you a lot of time let me get a little bit into the cost of what these policies of procedure those ready-made ones what they're gonna
00:10:57
cost you and kind of what you might expect to get as you're going through that process so the cost of getting a good policies and procedure is really going to vary quite a bit depending on just who you're looking at but i would say you're looking at probably somewhere between a thousand and five thousand dollars and it's not an annual fee or anything like that it's generally just a one-time fee um you might be able to find some financing options with some of these companies that are offering the policies
00:11:22
and procedures as well so it's a question that you could ask them some of them i would imagine i haven't seen one but it wouldn't surprise me if they have some kind of like a retainer thing so that you can get updated ones on an annual basis or something like that or helping you customize things i i think that's you could probably find somebody that's going to offer those types of services for you that said i would say you should probably expect to be somewhere between 1500 and 2500 for a
00:11:46
really good solid base set of policies and procedures uh if you're looking for something that's a lot more custom to you and and you're really getting into it with somebody else you're gonna be on the higher end you know five thousand dollars if you just want the good solid just base this is what i want this is gonna meet the state standards fifteen hundred to twenty five hundred dollars um is going to be what you could expect to to pay for for that type of a product you'll usually get a hard copy of that
00:12:13
with the binders and i just mentioned this with all those different policies and procedures along with a digital copy and you know many are going to give you that digital copy in word so that you can go in and make edits so a lot of them are going to give you that copy in word so you can go and make edits but i think some of them will probably give it to you in a pdf format as well which is going to be a little bit easier to print if you need to just take that word version and put it into a pdf it's a pretty simple
00:12:45
process if you're using microsoft word to do that if you need help with that make sure you comment down below so that i can create a tutorial video for you on how to uh transition a word document into a pdf so that makes it just a little bit easier for you to print things off especially if you're going to like office max or something like that to print off a big pack you know 200 page document set of things you probably want that in a pdf it's just going to help out and make it a little bit easier for you to
00:13:13
work with now some of those higher priced products that i talked about are probably going to have some consulting and maybe even customization attached to the policies and procedures so something that you want to take into consideration is it is it worth it for me to pay you know an extra 2500 to get access to somebody to help me implement these things and also to help me customize it to meet the specific needs of my facility you just kind of want to balance that out you know we've talked about how much a consultant might
00:13:45
cost you and we'll reference that up above so you can get a feel for what that would look like if you're purchasing policies and procedures and you need a consultant if you can find everything kind of under one umbrella you just have one payment to make which might help you out a little bit in the long run as well sorry i'm not sure what i'm trying to say with this note here something else that you can do is you're kind of interviewing and exploring the option of finding a company that can
00:14:15
give you policies and procedures is just figure out what it is that you need and then communicate that to them you know it's likely that you just need that based copy and that's going to be plenty to get you started and get you going down the road of having everything that you need so make sure you're just kind of researching different companies where you could purchase those different policies and procedures talk with the company and see exactly what it is they offer in their package
00:14:40
when you're purchasing that policies and procedures when were they last updated are they up to date with the most current rules and regulations do you offer consulting with it as well do you offer any customization kind of what what is included in this entire package that i am purchasing from you just make sure you have a really solid understanding of what you're getting yourself into it's going to just help you you know have a good solid product that you're comfortable with and and
00:15:04
then you don't feel like you're getting short shorted on anything or paying for something that you thought you were going to get or it's just going to be helpful that you have that conversation with them to make sure you get what you need what you're comfortable with and that you can then move forward with the purchase on that many policies and procedures are going to take a few weeks to deliver to you like i've mentioned several times you know these are 150 200 page documents
00:15:29
putting it into binders is a lot of work and so that hard copy is is going to take a little bit of time to get to you so if you are expecting the state to come for a survey sooner rather than later you want to make sure that you kind of plan for that because you don't know when state's coming and you want to make sure that you have everything in place so that when that surveyor comes you can just hand it off to them and everything's everything's good that said i would expect that you would get that
00:15:58
digital copy sooner uh maybe even instantly uh you know within a day or two because that's a lot easier to just kind of send off and be like here's here's the digital copy you may also find somebody that has just a digital copy and that is going to be sufficient for your needs and you can do all the printing off of everything and it might save you a few hundred dollars if they have the option to just give you a digital copy so that's something else a different kind of conversation you would have with the
00:16:24
company that has the policies and procedures but something else you might consider as you're trying to build that out and then also just you know make sure that you are purchasing a set of policies and procedures if you're doing that that you are getting the most current set of rules and regulations you don't want to buy from somebody from somebody that last updated it 10 years ago and it's completely out of date now you want to make sure that you are getting the most current version of all the rules and regulations
00:16:51
because if you don't an estate surveyor comes in you're going to get dinged for it and you don't want that to happen so just make sure you have everything up to date everything's current and then it will just put you in a much better spot now in our next video we're going to be getting into where can you go to find different policies and procedure handbooks that are for sale so i've given you a lot of information what you might want to look for as you're trying to find those policies and
00:17:13
procedures we'll get into where you can actually go and find some of them give you a few resources to help you get down that path uh and finding somebody to give you a policies and procedure handbook a good base set to get you started if you are interested in learning more about investing in assisted living make sure you visit me on assisted assistedlivinginvesting.net i've got free resources over there you can set up a call and we can kind of chat through the process and see if i can help you find a good place for you
00:17:40
to find policies and procedures and just remember it doesn't take a lot just a little bit just keep making progress step by step by step if you do it you're consistent every day i promise you that you will be successful thanks for watching and have a great day [Music] you
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