Establishing a referral stream is one of the main reasons behind the massive growth of home healthcare agencies. To do this, we need to concentrate on various referral sources. But despite all of the above, the quality of care and client satisfaction is a crucial element also.
To develop strong referral sources for a home healthcare agency, you should focus on important elements. So let’s get straight into it!
Client Gratification
Home-based care is a personal venture but complicated too. It’s very important to satisfy the client personally at any cost. And if accidentally the client gets disappointed, they will be highly outspoken with their Home Health Care Insurance agent, which can directly influence your referrals in many ways.
Home healthcare agencies work with different health insurance providers, and if the client is unhappy, there will be no more referrals coming your way.
The best way to ensure client satisfaction in a healthcare agency is to make the medication process less complex, educate the nursing staff, improve health service with best practices, online service ratings, collect patient feedback and take authentic actions based on the feedback and ratings.
By following these ways, your care agency will be highly able to please patients and uplift home healthcare referrals by gaining the attention of referral sources.
Build Relation with Hospital Discharge Planners
Being an owner of a home healthcare agency, you must probably be seeking to earn referrals. The easiest way to get more referrals is to develop good relationships with hospital discharge planners.
They have a list of post-hospital care, home health care, and senior housing in their area. However, they usually serve as the gatekeepers who suggest the patient about their next hospital destination.
If you have strong relations with the hospital discharge planners with a record of high-quality care and customer service, they’ll refer your home healthcare agency first.
But before this, do must ensure whether your healthcare home facilitates the patients with all possible benefits or not.
Gain Five Star Rating On Medicare’s HHC Website
The Home Health Compare Website is absolutely a power pack idea if you are Medicare-certified and willing to enhance your referral sources. Potential clients, private payers, and government funders probably look to this website to identify and compare your agency from your ratings with others to know how well you are performing.
For you to stand out above the competition, you should ask your patients for a shoutout on the Home Health Compare website by rating your service five or four stars. But before demanding a shoutout, make sure that you’re also providing them with the best health benefits services with high-class care and proper medication.
These ratings help signify referrals about the quality of care and facilities for patients provided by the agency. But the top ratings mostly help them decide which agency is the perfect fit for them. Ratings are very simple, but they play a very important role in referrals and payer sources.
Five-star ratings also help the healthcare agency to maintain their service quality and keep updated their staff for continuous business growth from the appreciated feedback.
However, let’s be practical. As it’s also not possible to gain a quality rating by the patients regularly on the HHC website, but you still have control over your team’s performance and attention to the patient’s health.
Ensure that your nursing staff is highly competent and confident to provide every possible health benefit to your consumers (Patients). This is how you can get quality ratings on the Home Health Compare website often, which leads directly to referrals.
Networking With Pharmacists Or Doctors
Promote your healthcare agency by building beneficial relations with community doctors or physicians. Design your complete agency promotion campaign and tell them about your quality services and health priorities.
Also, create some banners or brochures and distribute them in the local pharmacy. Additionally, show the pharmacists’ consumer testimonials and relevant patient healthcare records. This will help them trust you and refer you first in any recommendations.
Mitigate The Risk Factor And Prevent Your Patient From Harm
Another masterstroke to gain referrals for your home health care agency is to manage the risk as much as possible. In other words, save your patients from harm or more afflictions and diseases.
Maintaining patients’ records about their emergency room visits or continuous hospitalizations in the first 60 days of care requires lots of responsiveness.
But the patient shouldn’t be medicated in the hospital again after the end of your healthcare agency’s care for at least 30 days.
Your objective is to create a patient report about their no-visits to hospitals for 31 days after being discharged successfully from your agency.
Moreover, make sure your nursing staff is highly skilled for your team’s success. They must analyze and discuss every care factor regarding the patient’s health with their family and enlighten them about appropriate medications.
However, if needed, nurses or medical staff must alert physicians or doctors about patients’ serious disorders.
That’s an effective way to boost your home healthcare referrals.
Conclusion
By designing an effective referral system, all health system levels establish a close relationship, which ensures people receive the best possible care closest to home.
Moreover, it facilitates the efficient use of hospitals and primary health care services.
But to gain strong referral sources, a healthcare agency should be aware of providing quality care services and facilities to the patients. Without it, your home-based healthcare agency can face a significant and cost-effective loss soon.
About Caitlin Morgan
Caitlin Morgan specializes in insuring assisted living facilities and nursing homes and can assist you in providing insurance and risk management services for this niche market. Give us a call to learn more about our programs at (877) 226-1027.