Steve “The Hurricane” (00:00):
What’s up everybody? It’s Steve the Hurricane, and for today’s episode of a Drink with the Hurricane, we’re going to continue to talk about the top five referral sources for new patients. Today is specifically those ltac short-term rehabilitation centers. So raise your glass and let’s toast to your success. Cheers.
(00:26):
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. So I absolutely love your short-term rehabilitation. L Techs, otherwise known as a skilled nursing facility, a rehabilitation center. These were my favorite referral source back in the day when I was doing my home care agency way back 2005 through 2012. What I love about these accounts specifically is they have the greatest abundance of patients that have the greatest need. So if you’ve been following me for a long time, I talk about how I help my clients grow their patient census and I grow their revenues, not by necessarily having them bring on many more patients, although they grow their census, but have them grow their profits by bringing on people that need more hours of services per week than what they’re currently averaging using the latest Home Care Pulse data.
(01:42):
Most agencies surveyed are averaging only 15 hours per week per patient, whereas almost all of my clients who have been working with me for 12 months or longer are averaging closer to 40 hours per week per patient. So imagine if I had 40 patients on my census at 15 hours a week per patient. That’s only going to be 700 to 750 hours. On the flip side, if I had the same 40 patients, but they were averaging 40 hours per week of care per patient, that’s going to be 2000 billable hours per week, and that’s why my clients are so successful. So going further, what referral source has the most amount of patients that are going to need 40 hours of care or greater? It’s your LTACs, those long-term acute care rehabilitation hospitals, those SSNs, I love these referral sources for that purpose. The majority of the people there were too sick to go home straight from the hospital.
(02:49):
That’s why they went for the short-term rehab before coming home discharging, and many of the folks, when they went through their 20 days on Medicare, they maxed out their time and now they’re forced with an option stay and pay privately to be there. Even if they have a supplemental insurance, there’s still a copay. So stay in the nursing home rehab center and pay privately to be there or go home and pay privately for care to come in. Most people are going to go home and pay privately for care to come in. That’s what you’re looking for. So this is what I loved about these accounts. Now, all of these accounts are not created equal. If you are a client of mine specifically, you want to write down fast start lesson one where I talk about qualifying the accounts fast. Start lesson five where I talk about getting your foot in the door and advanced training lesson two and lesson six two, where I talk about blanketing the account and developing a long-term relationship.
(03:48):
And lesson six where I talk about picking up referrals, making exclusive contracts and preferred provider arrangements. But for the sake of this all intensive purposes, the best way to get into these accounts is to lead by your numbers. Something that I was very shocked to see in the latest Home Care Pulse data that only 25% of all private home care agencies are currently tracking their readmission rates. That means 75% of agencies are not, which is alarming to me because most people want to be a care provider. I feel that if you are a care provider, you should be tracking the very things that the people who are making the referrals to us are tracking. But that’s just me. But what does this also mean for you right now listening to this? This is a golden opportunity for you to start tracking your readmission rates, and don’t worry about how to do that.
(04:42):
Every one of the softwares that you use, if you’re using SmartCare, if you’re using Swift Ops, if you’re using Well Sky or some other software, they all have means for you to track readmissions, contact your software provider, ask them how to do this and begin doing it right away. When you prove to your referral sources, specifically those S N F Ltt techs that you have a low readmission rate, and what’s a low readmission rate? Those who are tracking right now nationally average 3%. That’s from the Home Care Pulse data. So when you prove that you have a 3% readmission rate or lower, you can leverage that to get into the account by showing them how you can help improve their patient outcomes. Because of all the referral source types to skilled nursing facilities have the highest readmission rates, hospitals, home health, they’re around 15, 16, 17% readmission rates, skilled nursing facilities average 24%, which means for every a hundred patients they discharge, 24, 25 of them will be readmitted.
(05:46):
Many of them have a 30% readmission rate, and so there’s plenty of people going home who end up coming back in and these skilled nursing facilities are trying their hardest to reduce those readmissions. This is opportunity for you by you going in there, partnering up with them, you could help them reduce their readmissions, which will help them to improve their patient outcomes, leading them to having a better score, leading them to get more patients to come there for therapy and rehab. There is so much. I just told you literally four different parts of two of the courses, of the programs that I work with clients on for many years over the last 12 years. You need to get into these referral sources, and if you’re not in there now, then the best thing you can do is go to my website, home care revolution.com and register today for the next bootcamp where I’m going to teach you how to get into these accounts and give you so much more so that you could blow away the competition. I.