Winning and Wowing Referral Sources

Referrals are the core of any HME business, but that doesn't mean they are easily established or kept. From company to company, the number and type of referral sources varies greatly. And though they all want patients to remain safe, healthy and at home, their needs can be as diverse as the consumers they serve.

“There's the clinical referral source who is interested in your clinical programs, such as disease management, and they have one perspective, and the operationally concerned referral source may have another,” says Louis Feuer, MA, MSW, president of Pembroke Pines, Fla.-based Dynamic Seminars & Consulting.

Feuer explains that clinicians want to hear about the features and benefits of products as well as disease state management programs. Hospital-based social workers' primary focus is reducing the patient's length of stay in the acute care setting as well as preventing readmissions. Payer-based case managers are concerned with insurance plan coverage and the most cost-effective means of stretching these dollars.

“Providers have to break down all the categories and realize that every one of these referral sources has a different perspective,” says Feuer.

Frank Brown, executive vice president of Homecare Concepts in Farmingdale, N.Y., adds that among the groups of referral sources HME providers target, the model can vary even in the same setting, such as a hospital.

Providers could be working with “a social worker, a discharge planner or a case manager,” he says.

That's why it is essential to know each referral source's goal and how you can best accomplish meeting that goal through service, patient care and operational efficiency.

Gary Wolfe, RN, CCM, is the executive vice president of the Academy of Certified Case Managers and an independent case manager in Salinas, Calif. He says it is important that the referral source and the HME provider understand each other's roles and responsibilities.

“Get to know each other and what level of expertise each of you has,” he advises. “As a case manager, I explain what I will do, what I have the authority to do and how I can help the HME provider in the situation. I want to build a relationship that will work over time.”

A seamless transition from an acute care setting to the home care setting is essential.

When Mindy Owen, RN, CRRN, CCM, principal of Phoenix HealthCare Associates, Coral Springs, Fla., entered the field, the intent of case management was to reduce the barriers between transitions of care and make it a seamless process.