Achieving successful outcomes and letting all your referral sources know about them is one of the best ways to increase your Medicare referrals. This year, hospitals will be making important decisions about who to partner with, especially as the ACO issue heats up. Successful outcomes and high satisfaction levels will be rewarded with more high reimbursement referrals.

The Affordable Care Act is in full swing and will change your current referral relationships. Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) are being formed in your marketplace with the desire to lower costs and improve outcomes. Your current Medicare referrals are at risk if your organization is not included. To prepare and protect your flow of Medicare referrals, re-look at the way you are projecting your image to referral sources and physicians. Make sure your building’s name and brand reflect that you are an expert in short-term rehab and sub-acute care.

Health care reform will change referral relationships. So to protect your Medicare referrals in the future, start communicating your clinical capabilities and successful outcomes to referral sources, physicians and consumers right now. This will enhance your image as a provider of superior short-term rehabilitation and sub-acute care and help to maintain or increase your Medicare revenues.

Is there a way to anticipate where my census is heading so I can proactively take steps to avoid a dip or maximize an up-trend?

The answer is yes. Rather than just looking at total census, take a closer look at the various factors that have a direct impact on your census – factors we call Census Drivers™ The Census Drivers™ we suggest that you track and review are; inquiries, referrals, admissions, conversion ratio, facility denials, discharges and length of stay. By documenting these on a daily basis and reviewing them regularly, you will likely spot important underlying trends that are leading indicators of what’s going to happen with your census in the near future. For example:

• How well are referral sources performing – as compared with previous periods? Has something changed? Are you getting less referrals or too many referrals you cannot (or do not want to) make a bed offer on?
• How well are you converting referrals into admissions? Often a small increase in conversions can have a major impact on census.
• Is census falling despite the fact that your referrals and admissions are still strong? Perhaps it’s your LOS that’s the culprit.
• Carefully reviewing facility denials can reveal important information about what referral sources think of you. If you are continually getting inappropriate referrals, that can be a sign that you may need to educate (or re-educate) referral sources about your services and capabilities.
• Seeing too many facility denials? Have senior management review every denial, every day. You will be surprised at how this process can reduce facility denials and increase admissions when staff knows their decisions are being reviewed. It’s also a great way to uncover misunderstandings the admissions staff may have about admissions policy.

Tracking Census Drivers™, analyzing them and acting upon your findings is often the quickest, easiest and least costly way to optimize admissions and increase census.