This is a Drink With “The Hurricane”, the talk show discussing all things, growing your home care business. This video is sponsored by Home Care Evolution where we help home care agencies adapt to changing circumstances, transform their business so that they can thrive for years to come.
I’m gonna show you something that is very painful to me as a consultant, but the 200 people in this room, you are the ones with the advantage because you are learning this right now from the Home Care Pulse report. One in four agencies is currently tracking their readmission rates, one in four. No wonder the skilled nursing facilities and the hospitals don’t take us seriously. We’re not even tracking readmission rates. ’cause all of them do. They have to. So in order to be able to walk the walk and deliver on it, we have to.
Now, you know what the good news is? If anybody in this room has smart care, if anybody in this room has Swift Ops or Care Time or Well Sky or any of the other software providers out there, every single software that you are investing in already has the ability to do this. You just have to put the information in. So don’t ask me how to track it. Reach out to your, your provider, your service provider, and ask them, how do I track readmission rates? And they’ll tell you how to set it up in your software that you already are paying money for. But this is important. When I see this, again, this, this, it hurts me that only 25% are doing it. But this gives you a competitive advantage.
This is when you’re talking about forming that interdisciplinary team. And you say, and this is, I know Cheryl and, and Jenny, you guys had that, we talked about that, your readmission rate. So we’re in there, the hospital, we did our homework before we walked in that hospital, the hospital had an average readmission rate of about 17%, which is slightly above average. Not bad though. It was a good hospital. But when we walk in and say ours is 3%, they’re like, what are you guys doing? Well, we’re taking care of our patients. You should refer us. Can we have an in-service lunch and learn? Yes, which is the next part of it. Get an in-service, right? Because when you have the in-service, this is a chance for you to speak about your company, about what you’re doing, talk about your specialty program, and for clients fast start lesson six. That’s where I teach you how to do the 25 minute lunch and learn. Okay, 25 minute in-service, fast start lesson six.
The next thing, you’re gonna start getting referrals as this happens, right? ’cause once you do that in-service, now they understand what you do now they understand how you’re doing it. Now they understand, you know, what your services are, and now you’re gonna start to get referrals, right? You have to close that first referral. Do you know why we have to close that first referral? Because we have to go back and do what? Follow up, right? Prove ourselves, right? An interdisciplinary team. When I, I, for those of you in the Elite Academy, I think not everybody, but some of you have been to the meeting where we review and we watch the social worker interview, right? I know some of you have seen the social worker interview. I have, I I, I had a bunch of social workers I used to work with many years ago when I was doing this firsthand. And two of those social workers actually allowed me, hi Jennifer. Two of those clients social workers actually allowed me to interview them on camera and do like a tell all, like, why do I refer who I refer? What are my pet peeves? How do, how should you approach me as a, so as a, as a vendor, you know, all this other great stuff. The one thing that both of those social workers said in two completely independent interviews was that so few agencies and representatives that they give business to ever come back and tell them what happened with their patient. They’re like, it’s very, very few. And they both said that anybody who’s gonna give me updates and not just an update once, but like updates long term, that’s gonna be the agency that I’m gonna refer again and again and again and again. Because otherwise I feel like you’re just trying to make the money and make the sale and you don’t care about your patients. That’s what the social worker said. So when we close a referral, we must go back and follow up on that referral and give them updates.