This text is a part of your HHCN+ membership

Referral sources are the lifeblood of dwelling care companies. Even with cost and staffing headwinds, stable referral supply relationships present a path to sustainability for suppliers.

At Avid Well being at Dwelling, there are a variety of parts that make up the referral supply technique. The corporate prioritizes routine communication and personalizing outreach.

“No referral supply and no payer is precisely the identical. You actually get to know the people who find themselves sending you instances and be sure to tailor your communication model to their wants and preferences for a way they study your small business,” Jennifer Lentz, CEO of Avid Well being at Dwelling, informed Dwelling Well being Care Information.

Avid Well being at House is a house healthcare platform backed by personal fairness agency Havencrest Capital Administration. It has made a handful of acquisitions previously yr and is a fast-growing firm.

Suggestions is one other key aspect of Avid Well being at Dwelling's technique, Lentz stated.

“You may solely get higher, enhance and develop if you happen to perceive precisely how you might be perceived locally,” she stated. “Now we have established channels for routine suggestions from our referral sources and our payers in order that we will deal with any issues in a extra well timed method, simply as we’d with our shoppers and workers for his or her satisfaction scores.”

Avid Well being at Dwelling receives referrals from shoppers by means of phrase of mouth, group partnerships, and payers.

American Benefit Dwelling Care is one other firm that understands the significance of robust relationships with referral sources. Since CEO Cleamon Moorer Jr. purchased the corporate in 2019, referrals have helped the corporate enhance its census.

American Benefit Dwelling Care, primarily based in Dearborn, Michigan, gives expert nursing, rehabilitation and specialty care. The corporate at the moment serves 4 counties in southeastern Michigan and has a affected person rely of 200.

About 70 p.c of American Benefit Dwelling Care's referrals are hospital discharges, Moorer stated. The corporate additionally will get referrals from native physicians and phrase of mouth.

As a part of its technique to strengthen referrals, American Benefit Dwelling Care has positioned itself as a options supplier for case managers and discharge planners.

“Not solely by serving to them with their outbound referrals for sufferers that we may settle for, however by taking it a step additional and tactically how we may also help them discover different suppliers within the occasion that we will’t settle for their affected person,” Moorer informed HHCN. “A few of these different suppliers is perhaps, for instance, infusion companies for a affected person who wants a spherical of antibiotics, or perhaps a clinic for sufferers who want bodily remedy or rehabilitation.”

The concept behind being a options supplier is to transcend the transactional nature of relationships with referral sources.

“How are you going to rework the expertise, not just for the affected person and their household, but additionally for the discharge planner or social employee who’s attempting to take care of a affected person,” Moorer stated.

For Pleasant Faces Senior Care, a Houston, Texas-based dwelling care supplier specializing in caring for sufferers with Alzheimer's and dementia, consistency is essential.

“It’s all about being constant,” Qiana James, CEO of Pleasant Faces Senior Care, informed HHCN. “There are such a lot of different dwelling care suppliers, as soon as you permit, three or 4 others are available after you, so I’ve taught my crew to be constant in relation to follow-ups.”

When wanting on the areas that dwelling care and residential well being suppliers see as the largest development alternatives for 2024, 33.1% of dwelling care suppliers and 16.8% of dwelling well being suppliers named strengthening relationships with referral sources as the highest alternative, in accordance with information from Activated Insights.

Avid Well being at Dwelling's technique has seen the corporate see vital will increase in natural development mixed with development by means of acquisitions.

American Benefit Dwelling Care additionally finds constant success by specializing in referral relationships.

“We take a look at development from a retention standpoint and never simply new affected person acquisition,” Moorer stated. “It looks like plenty of companies wish to give attention to extra — extra development, extra sufferers, extra geographies, extra income — however if you actually dig down and say, I wish to do extra and be extra for the sufferers that I serve and the stakeholders locally that I serve, that strikes you extra towards the standard dialog and being extra reliable.”

Moorer believes dwelling care leaders should place themselves as a part of the general healthcare ecosystem.

“You wish to place your self and your company as a significant half of a bigger ecosystem, and that requires referrals and cross-referrals from different varieties of organizations,” he stated.