The 1st QTR of 2015 flew by! I hate to say it, but planning for 2016 will be here soon. So how was your growth performance for the 1st Quarter? Did you meet your organization’s referral, admission and ADC growth goals? Does your organization even have growth goals? There are many that don’t- and without establishing goals, an organizations growth cannot be measured.

If you achieved your 1st QTR growth goals, congratulations! I hope the rest of 2015 brings you the best! If your growth was flat, or even worse, has declined, it is time to act. If your growth goals were not achieved, it is time to quickly “re-group” and “re-tool” as the rest of the year will fly by and before you know it you’ll be asking (or your boss) “Why didn’t we grow? What happened?”
Here are a few things to assess (and if broken) fix!

• Go back and look at your Not Taken Under Care (NUTC), and audit those cases to determine which ones should have NOT been NUTC. A referral is only NUTC if: they died, are outside your service area, tell you never ever to call them again or you do not accept their insurance or payer source. This is a QUICK fix to serving more patients.
• How many direct or indirect referrals did your Medical Director help secure for your hospice? If it was less than 9, it is time to sit down and chat with your Medical Director.
• What is your 90-day rolling conversion rate of referral inquiries to admission? To figure that out, add up all the referral inquiries received in January, February and March, and divide them by the admissions for the same period. This will be your April 90-day rolling conversion rate number. If it is below 75%, please call me, 734.658.6162, I can help.
• If you have sales people working for you that have been with you 6 months of more, these folks should have contributed at least 15 admissions in the 1st QTR. When was the last time you had a sale training program to work on skill set development and sales tool development?
• Do you have at least 5 Senior Living Communities with at least 3 or more patients in them? Pull together a cross-functional group from your organization and have a dialogue around this opportunity.
• Have you held at least one growth meeting with as many people in your organization to identify and discuss both barriers and opportunities to grow? Having a guided dialogue about growth is the first step in creating a culture of growth in your organization.
• If you have a Home Health company as part of your hospice company, how many referrals did you receive from Home Health as part of their discharge planning? For every 100 Home Health census, the rule of thumb would be 2 to 3 per month.

These are a few quick things that you can address now, to make your 2nd QTR growth goals successful.

The Best!