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Referral sources are the lifeblood of home-based care companies. Even with payment and staffing headwinds, solid referral source relationships offer a path to sustainability for providers.
At Avid Health at Home, there are a number of elements that go into its referral source strategy. The company prioritizes routine communication, and personalizing outreach.
“No two referral sources and no two payers are exactly the same, and so you’re really getting to know the people who send you cases, and making sure that you adjust your communication style to fit their needs and preference on how they’re learning about your business,” Avid Health at Home CEO Jennifer Lentz told Home Health Care News.
Avid Health at Home is a home care platform backed by the private equity firm Havencrest Capital Management. It has made a handful of acquisitions over the last year, and is a rapidly growing company.
Feedback is another important element of Avid Health at Home’s strategy, according to Lentz.
“You can only get better, improve and grow, if you’re able to understand exactly how you’re being perceived out into the community,” she said. “We established channels for routine feedback from our referral sources and our payers, so we can address any concerns more timely, like we would with our clients and employees for their satisfaction scores.”
Avid Health at Home’s referral sources come by way of word of mouth, partnerships in the community and payer sources.
American Advantage Home Care, too, is a company that understands the importance of strong relationships with referral sources. Since CEO Cleamon Moorer Jr. purchased the company in 2019, referrals helped the company beef up its census.
Based in Dearborn, Michigan, American Advantage Home Care provides skilled nursing, rehab and specialty care services. Currently, the company serves four counties in the Southeast Michigan area and has a census of 200 patients.
Roughly 70% of American Advantage Home Care’s referrals are hospital discharges, according to Moorer. The company’s referrals also come through local physicians and word of mouth.
As part of its referral strengthening strategy, American Advantage Home Care has positioned itself as a solutions provider for case managers and discharge planners.
“Not only being able to help them with their outbound referrals for patients that we could accept, but going a step further and tactically looking to help them source other providers in the event that we could not take on their patient,” Moorer told HHCN. “Some of those other providers could be, for example, infusion services for a patient that needs a round of antibiotics, or even an inpatient facility in the event that a patient needs physical therapy or rehabilitation.”
The idea behind being a solutions provider means going beyond the transactional nature of referral source relationships.
“How can you transform the experience for not only the patient, their family, but the discharge planner or caseworker that’s trying to get a patient taken care of,” Moorer said.
For Friendly Faces Senior Care, a Houston, Texas-based home care provider that specializes in delivering care to patients living with Alzheimer’s and dementia, consistency is key.
“It’s all about being consistent,” Friendly Faces Senior Care CEO Qiana James told HHCN. “There are so many other home care providers, the minute you leave, three or four more will show up behind you, so I’ve taught my team to be consistent when it comes to follow ups.”
When looking at areas that home care and home health providers considered top growth opportunities for 2024, 33.1% of home care providers and 16.8% of home health providers identified strengthening relationships with referral sources as the No. 1 opportunity, according to data from Activated Insights.
As a result of Avid Health at Home’s strategy, the company has seen a significant uptick in organic growth, paired with its growth through acquisition.
Similarly, American Advantage Home Care has seen consistent success by focusing on referral relationships.
“We look at growth from the standpoint of patient retention and not only new patient acquisition,” Moorer said. “It appears that many agencies want to focus on more — more growth, more patients, more regions, more revenue — but if you really drill down to saying, I want to do more and be more for the patients that I serve and the stakeholders in the community that I’m in, then it sort of bends you more toward the quality conversation and being more reliable.”
Ultimately, Moorer believes that home-based care leaders should cement themselves as part of the overall ecosystem for health care.
“You want to position yourself and position your agency as a vital part of a larger ecosystem, and that requires referrals and cross referrals from other types of organizations,” he said.
Companies featured in this article:
American Advantage Home Care, Avid Health at Home, Friendly Faces Senior Care
