5 Steps to Effortless Home Health Onboarding

Home health schedulers spend a third of each day leaving voicemails for new patient referrals. Seventy-five percent of people will not answer an unknown phone call. The small number who do answer the phone may be in transition from the hospital or have other reasons why scheduling their assessment at that moment is not an option.

With requirements that the initial patient assessment must be held within 48 hours of the patient’s return home, the clock is ticking. About one-third of patients are not seen in this timeframe, placing these patients at a 12% higher risk for readmission to the hospital or an ED visit in 30 days.

What is an agency to do? Eliminate phone tag, improve onboarding times, and reduce staff effort by embracing asynchronous secure patient texting. Responses to texts are superior to phone calls and emails with 98% of texts being opened and a 96% read rate.? Further reduce staff efforts by incorporating chatbots and campaign automation. Here is how:

1.??? Communicate

Skip scheduling staff phone tag. Use campaign automation to reach out to all new referrals. Include an onboarding chatbot for new patients welcoming the patient, by name, to your agency, and naming the referring physician who wants them seen ASAP. Send a series of nudges every few hours for patients who do not initially respond.

2.??? Schedule

Seamlessly transfer responding patients to your scheduling staff to digitally schedule a home assessment. If needed, the scheduler can convert the secure text to a phone call or virtual visit.

3.??? Confirm

Skip nurse phone calls. Use campaign automation to automatically trigger the appointment confirmation. Consider including the picture and a brief biography of the nurse to increase trust for the patient to open the door. Include key tips to prepare for the assessment, such as securing pets and more. If there is a need for a last-minute change to the schedule, enable staff to use secure patient texting rather than playing phone tag.

4.?? Reinforce

Use campaign automation to provide key instructions to the patient such as how to get ahold of the agency should they have health concerns between visits. Consider using virtual visits to enable staff to physically see the patient and potentially avoid an unscheduled trip to the home. This will help reduce avoidable ED visits and hospitalizations, improving Home Health Value-based Purchasing (HHVBP) performance.

5.??? Measure

Use campaign automation to trigger a brief pulse survey to measure patient satisfaction.? This near real-time data provides useful information on the agency’s strengths and areas for improvement. Thanking patients for positive feedback and following up on issues will positively impact your HHCAHPS scores and make your agency attractive to the majority of individuals using online review ratings to select a company. Improving HHCAHPS scores will also improve HHVBP scores.

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These are just examples of how home health agencies can use QliqSOFT’s robust digital communication platform to increase home health operational efficiency and enhance staff and patient satisfaction. For more information on how to speed your patient onboarding or solve other communication challenges contact us.