10 Steps to Generate Referrals

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Top 10 Steps to Generate Physician and Hospital Referrals

Top 10 Steps to Generate Physician and Hospital Referrals Almost a decade ago, exp perts examiniing long-term care (LTC) no oted that assisted living facilities (ALFs) and skilled nursing facilitties (SNFs) neeed to be more aggrressive in generating business. Although benign is generally an amenab ble word in healthcaree, it tolls a dangero ous knell for facilities thinking that simplistic word-of-m mouth and/or tradition nal advertiising will attract famillies and even patients.

This paper pro ovides an oveerview on how to reeach thesee markets in 10 steps through two keyy referrals: physicians and ho ospitals.

Step 1: Train the Admissions Specialist

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Step 2: Use A Different Kind of Direct-to-Physician Marketing Method

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Step 3: Discover the Best In-House Contact

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Step 4: Exhibit Empathy

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Step 5: Help Physicians Talk to Patients

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Step 6: Provide Real Data

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Step 7: Understand Financial Benchmarks

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Step 8: Target Hospitals the New Way

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Step 9: Think Beyond Physicians and Hospitals

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Step 10: Understand True Innovation

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Step 1: Train the Admissions Specialist

sources. This person can meet with and assess potential residents who are awaiting hospital discharges.

Each organization should have one in-house collaborator that works with targets that may ultimately bring new residents. An admissions specialist is the best person to perform this function. Your organization may have a different title, such as community outreach, care coordinator or admissions coordinator, but this position should handle planning, social interactions and marketing. Your specialist must have a solid rapport with residents and their families, as they are the first link to potential personal tie-ins with physicians and hospitals in many cases.

What skillsets will allow the admissions specialist to build effective relationships with referral sources? Should that person be totally relied upon as the person who encourages residents to move in and stay?

Admissions specialists that focus on assisted living referrals seek out different sources for those referrals.

Salary.com. April 11, 2017. Retrieved from http://www1.salary.com/AdmissionsCoordinator-Nursing-Home-salary.html

These different sources include churches, home care agencies, adult day centers, physician offices, elder law attorneys and financial planners. Typically, this professional also meets with prospective residents and adult children, and is trained in the sales/admissions process.

Here are some important skills to consider when choosing an admissions specialist:

Highly skilled specialists want compensation at current competitive wages. Figures from February 2017 indicate an average annual salary exceeds $45,000, which is specific to nursing homes, although nurses who assume admission responsibilities are usually paid at the higher scale. Some specialists can make more than $85,000.

Ideally, the admissions specialist for an SNF is a clinician who can build relationships with referral

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Step 2: Use A Different Kind of Direct-toPhysician Marketing Method

Although it has become more difficult to meet with physicians and their staff over lunch, you should still extend the invitation. Your admissions specialist needs to be prepared to offer rehabilitation outcome data, hospital readmission rates, Medicare star ratings, staffing practices and clinical core competencies.

For generations, a specific type of advertising focus— direct-to-physician (or DTP)—has guided marketing (most often pharmaceutical) only to the professionals.

A different kind of DTP campaign is now necessary, and it’s a mindset expanding in recognition among broadminded LTC admissions specialists.

Don’t forget LinkedIn. It’s one of the best social media tools for building a reputation with colleagues. Make sure your admissions specialist understands LinkedIn and uses it to collaborate with others. Discuss whether joining groups in insurance and legal might help your efforts. (See Step #9.)

The key is targeting specific segment(s) of medical professionals, which is often called the “target shooting” approach versus “blanket shots” in marketing. More marketing specialists—even those with major dollars— recognize that blindly advertising to everyone is not productive, and thus are refining these blanket shots.

Step 4: Exhibit Empathy Has your admissions specialist gathered feedback showing that Dr. A wants 1 a.m. calls about Ms. Studebaker needing extra meds, or that she has returned to the hospital? Make sure the physician receives such calls. Tell the stories of patient outcomes with physicians on follow-up visits because it not only shows good customer service, but also it builds trust for new referral sources. Keep referral physicians in the loop; it shows them respect and you can earn theirs in return.

The first step admissions must take is to define the type of physician(s) whose patients are your specialty, for example, targeting cardiac specialists when a significant percentage of your patients need outstanding cardiac rehabilitation. Wound care may be another critical need of your residents. If so, consider making endocrinologists and even primary care providers treating those with diabetes a high priority on your facility’s “getting to know you” list.

Step 5: Help Physicians Talk to Patients

Step 3: Discover the Best In-House Contact So Dr. MacGruder, who is located two miles away, is part of your newly developed (or acquired) “getting to know you list.” Will the physician truly take time to chat with your admissions specialist? Very often the answer is “no.”

In the 1980s, direct-to-consumer (DTC) print and TV advertising evolved, yet even today many physicians don’t understand why educated patients bring print stories or online downloads to an appointment. Start teaching your targeted physicians what to expect in these consultations.

Don’t dismay. Make sure your admissions specialist finds—and befriends—the office managers.

Relationships with these standard bearers ultimately play major roles in gaining admissions practice referrals.

For some targets, the best approach is slow and steady.

Learn what physicians need to understand about your community, and then develop communication tools to provide that fact-based data to them on a regular basis.

Physicians ultimately want to know that a retirement community offers quality service, but they also want to know that their patient will be cared for in the same manner as they cared for them. Make sure your admissions specialist can answer questions regarding specific issues that are important to each of your key referral sources. These answers will not be guarantees, of course, but will provide an overview. One area may be

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director’s name with the physician, talk about typical plans of care and discuss any person-centered care practices.

helping the physicians understand the value of choosing a rehabilitation center over one’s home for a patient’s recovery. Share the credentials of the rehabilitation staff, the average length of stay and your facility’s speciality, such as elective orthopedic surgeries or cardiac rehabilitation.

Step 6: Provide Real Data Your admissions specialist needs to be prepared to answer quality-related questions from managers and physicians. These questions may include the following:

Your admissions specialist could say, “Yes, we know that 83-year-olds can have total knee replacement (TKR).

We’ve seen the latest numbers showing that 10% of

• • •

“Does anyone know your outcomes?”

“When did Mrs. Smith come through ... and how long did she stay?”

“What happened with her discharge?”

Researching in-house data will be a critical skill in admissions. Consider the information from Improving Medicare Post-Acute Care Transformation (IMPACT).

Established by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) in 2015, the program’s true design is providing patients with an aid toward overviewing outcomes in different facilities. However, experts note that data can also help LTCs review their own successes, so finding and displaying quickly readable statistics (e.g., a fact sheet, infographic) may be highly effective. Your admissions specialist can discuss these materials after a get-acquainted call or during the first meeting.

Step 7: Understand Financial Benchmarks As a result of the Affordable Care Act, bundled payment systems have been developed to ensure that patients who discharge from the hospital to a rehabilitation center receive quality care in a timely manner. However, penalties are assessed for longer lengths of stay and hospital readmissions. Physicians are very interested in knowing that the financial benchmarks are realized through these types of contracts, since they work closely with hospitals.

Healthline Infographic. Knee Replacement Statistics. Retrieved from http://www.healthline.com/health/total-knee-replacementsurgery/statistics-infographic

Americans age 80+ have had at least one TKR and that’s why we’ve instituted ...”, and then document your LTC’s specialized rehabbing of this patient segment. Your targeted physicians could eventually say, “Yes, Mrs. Stephenson. I do know a place for great post-TKR rehab for people with your needs.”

To make your timeline truly profitable, your admissions specialist should cultivate existing physician relationships, as opposed to developing new ones. (It

Your admissions specialist should also discuss the services of your LTC nursing team, share the medical

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in modifying readmissions. For example, your admissions specialist can document the positive results that your community’s strategies achieve, and then share that information with your referral sources.

can take months just to get an introductory response from the latter and that often leads to fewer new targets in your medical category.) Know your solid referring physicians, develop a list of which physicians could refer more patients and make sure the admissions team knows where your medical director is referring patients.

If you aren’t receiving the referral, then find out why and make sure it’s appropriately addressed.

Although tracking and offering this information back to hospital discharge planners is important, these results can play a role in gaining physician support, too. Most hospitals use electronic systems to refer patients to retirement communities, and the data from these systems (Curaspan, ECIN, EPIC) can be used to evaluate referral patterns. The admissions specialist also can use this information to build a case to seek additional referrals from a particular source.

Mastrangelo, K. (2015). Opportunities for Nursing Homes: Top 10 Tools for Success. Provider. Retrieved from http://www.providermagazine.com/columns/Pages/2015/Opportu nities-For-Nursing-Homes-Top-Ten-Tools-For-Success.aspx

Step 8: Target Hospitals in a New Way Are patients in the area mostly remaining at hospitals?

It’s a challenge being faced as more hospitals have their own rehabilitation center on campus. Your admissions specialist should determine whether buying and then analyzing data from resources, such as the American Hospital Directory (AHD), is a cost-effective option to more deeply understand what is happening with the flow of referrals. If they aren’t coming to you, find out why and make sure it is addressed.

Step 9: Think Beyond Physicians and Hospitals Although this paper has offered specific strategies to approach health professionals in private practices and hospitals, it’s important to remember other options.

Certain collaborators can help identify who needs an incentive to move to an LTC. Who are these resources? If your community is among those serving smaller populations (both in number of residents and surrounding geography), forming relationships with admissions specialists in other communities providing AL/SNF can create very enlightening experiences. Because you may not always have available beds at a given time, it is important to be a professional resource and provide other options.

Maryann Timon, RN, a 35-year expert in the postacute care industry and Vice President of Post-Acute Strategies at PMD Advisory Services, reminds SNFs to be ready to review quarterly CMS reports on SNF valuebased programming. Because this program had to reduce overall funding, “only 60% [of SNFs] . . . are to be awarded such incentives.”

Ancillary aids to the aging population exist in most communities, and especially in populations with very specific needs. Your admissions specialist also should contact those community members that know who is (or should be) considering relocation, including estate planners, Meals on Wheels personnel and clergy.

Hospitals that farm out patients are especially likely to understand these ratings and be searching for quality care based on CMS five-star quality ratings and other CMS quality benchmarks, according to Timon. She recommends tracking and analyzing discharge patterns for the several disease states being discharged from one’s local facilities, and then showing true results

Timon, M. PMD Advisory Services White Paper: Post-Acute Care Strategies. Retrieved from www.pmdas.com.

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Step 10: Understand True Innovation

Finding an answer could help determine whether transportation is the most important service to offer and fund, thereby providing stronger insights for other qualities to emphasize.

A U.S. Department of Health and Human Services report noted a key mistake made by those exploring innovative healthcare marketing strategies: it is never fully implemented. Yes, in stage I a team is gathered, input is generated and an outreach program is designed.

Sometimes, stage II is implemented, which includes meeting the market’s current needs through a pilot program that—among smart admissions specialists— ultimately expands to the full audience.

Becoming a farsighted targeting admissions specialist through these 10 steps means you’ll more easily add long-term goals—and ways to meet them. The admissions specialist will bring savvy for developing and maintaining methodology that demonstrates your community’s solid evolution, thereby garnering referrals from physicians and hospitals.

But the report suggests the ultimate stage—if you’re among those seeking truly novel outreach programs—is to look beyond what’s already needed, that is, to “innovate and devise services that would never even occur to a customer to ask for.”

Omachonu, V., and Einspruch, N. (2010). Innovation Healthcare Delivery Systems: A Conceptual Framework. The Innovation Journal: The Public Sector Innovation Journal, 15(1), 13. Retrieved from http://xa.yimg.com/kq/groups/22136350/406689753/name/ Healthcare+innovation.pdf

Recent statistics indicate residential care communities (RCCs) do not necessarily understand what residents are seeking or using. For example, 84% of RCCs are offering transportation to medical services, but only 59% of residents are using that service. The admissions specialist needs to ask questions such as the following:

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Conclusion To be more aggressive in generating business through hospital and physical referrals, organizations need to employ highly skilled admissions specialists that can reach out to hospitals, physicians and community sources; use social media strategically; approach specific segments of medical professionals in marketing; analyze hospital data to assess referral patterns; research inhouse data and seek to understand innovation in all these areas.

Are the residents providing their own transportation?

Are hospital personnel transporting residents?

Are the residents using a mobility service, such as those services provided to the disabled in some states?

HHS, CDC and NCHS. (2016). Residential Care Communities and the Residents in 2010: A National Portrait. Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nsrcf/nsrcf_chartbook.pdf

Have we publicized our transportation services well enough that residents are aware of them?

For or more information abou about ut gen generating neratin ng bus business siness th through hrough hospital an and physician referral and how w Love & Com mpanyy can hellp your retirement mmunity explore these neew techniquees, con ntact Tim m Bracken in the east e com at 301-663-12339 or Rickk Hunnsicker in thee west att 214-906-3801 S ENIOR M ARKETING S PECIALISTS Corporate Office: 301-663-1239 • 1209 N. East Street, Frederick, MD 21701 Western Office: 214-906-3801 • 716 Mustang Drive, Fairview, TX 75069 www.LoveAndCompany.com 7