Regardless of your facility's score in the CMS Five-Star Rating, remember that the way key audiences judge the quality of your care and services is not based on any single assessment. If you did well, be sure to promote your rating. If you were less than perfect, focus your communications on tried and true performance measures - community reputation, word-of-mouth referrals, and resident/family satisfaction surveys.
To get the most out of each telephone inquiry, introduce an Inquiry Rewards Program. Create a brightly colored sheet that's left at every location where outside calls can be answered (reception, nurses' station, etc.).
To ensure that the calls are properly handled, incentivize your staff with an escalating monetary reward for:
A weekly review by senior management of all denied referrals can help build your census in three ways:
The current thinking on the Healthcare Reform Bill is that hospitals (and doctors) will be penalized for having too many of their Medicare Part A patients who have been referred to lower levels of care returned to the hospital within a short time with the same or similar diagnosis.
