Tag Archives: health systems

Five Ways To Reduce Patient Referral Leakage In Hospitals And Health Systems

Hospitals and health systems know that referrals are critical for their business, and failing to manage referrals efficiently can result in loss of revenue. Healthcare providers are losing more than 20% of revenue to patients going out-of-network for care. Most of these hospitals and health systems do not know why and where referral leakage occurs.

It’s only within the past few years healthcare leaders see patient referral leakage as a major issue, and fixing it is their high priority – Missed appointments alone cost the US healthcare system $150 billion annually. Healthcare organizations do not have a solution in place to monitor, track, and report patient referral leakage. They use their electronic health records to monitor and track referral leakage rather than having specific solutions, but healthcare leaders are not happy about how their EHR performs in this particular area.

Today, most hospitals and health systems leverage technology to prevent revenue leakage due to inefficient referral process. Tracking patient referral leakage through a referral solution gives them a complete view of their end-to-end referral process. Technology helps providers enhance care delivery, improve patient outcomes and use of data, and support collaborative workflows.

Here are five ways to reduce patient leakage:

Understand their referral patterns so far:

Organizations should analyze past data to understand their referral patterns. By tracking the right metrics they will not only gain valuable business acumen but also understand how the hospital is performing. Hospitals today use EHR to get this data but it is not streamlined enough to crunch all the data in a logical and meaningful way.

Improve care-coordination:

Effective and efficient communication is crucial in healthcare. Patients need to receive the right level of care from their care providers. It is important to communicate effectively with all who are actively involved in patient care.

Proceed with a data-driven approach:

A data-driven approach will have a sustainable competitive advantage over those who haven’t. The right way to make decisions is by looking at the data. Understand where the leakage is happening and if it is addressable. Health systems/ Hospitals need to use a data-driven approach to guide patient referrals to the best care option available within the network. Such an approach will help meet both the patients’ and hospital needs.

Use prognostic modeling to know the implications of future referral patterns:

Organizations need to understand how fixing referral patterns today may change future referral patterns by using predictive modeling. It’s essential to analyze how these alterations will impact patient flow, care delivery and coordination with referring providers and payers.

Include it as strategic precedence and discuss at the executive level:

Patient leakage more often gets lost among other priorities at the executive level. Organizations need to make patient referral leakage a strategic priority. Top management should drive change and ensure necessary steps are taken to address this challenge.

Tracking and understanding referral patterns will help the large hospitals streamline and manage high- overall performance referral networks, decrease patient leakage and notably impact care quality.

HealthViewX Patient Referral Management Solution smoothens the referral process and solves most operational challenges for Large Enterprise Hospitals. Do you want to know more about HealthViewX HIPAA-compliant Patient Referral Management Solution? Schedule a demo now!

Why do hospitals need a patient referral management solution?

Today, hospitals face numerous challenges in their day-to-day operations. One of the biggest challenges is managing their high-volume inbound and outbound patient referrals. Right from receiving patient referrals through multiple channels like email, fax, phone, etc., this method is often information-intensive and document-driven, requiring greater control and visibility of the entire process.

Patients have difficulty navigating through the referral process, and this experience directly impacts the quality of care. Poor referral management negatively impacts hospitals, and hence clinical staff needs to be careful in processing every referral. An inefficient referral process leads to patient dissatisfaction, patient leakage, loss of revenue, missed appointments/no-show rates, overall operational inefficiencies, etc.

Successful clinical practice depends on effective collaboration and communication among the parties involved in patient care. A solution such as patient referral management for large hospitals has the power to enhance communication beyond the four walls of a healthcare facility. It extends communication to all parties involved in patient care, including the patient. Such solutions can have enormous sway on enhancing the patient experience while driving overall operational efficiency.

Top reasons why hospitals need a patient referral management solution

1. Doesn’t let you miss any referral

Hospitals send and receive high-volume patient referrals through multiple-channels like emails, fax, website form fills, direct messaging, etc. It becomes difficult to track every referral, and there are high chances of missing out on them. An end-to-end patient referral solution will bring all referrals in one single queue and eliminates referral leakage. Referrals from physicians are a key source of revenue for hospitals and they would not want to miss out on them.

2. Engages patients throughout the referral process

Hospitals need to involve patients’ in the referral process. Engaging patients will not only increase process visibility for patients’ but also gives them a clear expectation and visibility into their care transition. Involving patients in the referral process directly impacts the standard of care patients’ receive from the hospital. Overall, engaging patients’ will help reduce referral leakages, improve patient satisfaction, and increase revenue.

3. Referral patterns and metrics/analytics

Referral solutions help hospitals understand their referral patterns and appointment conversion rates. Customized reports and analytics on referrals will help hospitals gain better insight into their business, using analytics such as the metrics dashboard, referral volume, referral patterns leakage rate, wait times, etc. help them with informed decision making.

4. Involves and engages key players for better results

To drive results and for better outcomes, it is crucial to include all the key players’ involved in patient care. Patient referral management solution helps people in different designation achieve their goals at the same time helps provide quality care for their patients. Persona-based reports help each of them in informed decision making.

HealthViewX Patient Referral Management solution helps practices in managing their referral network and increasing their revenue. Are you referral inbound & outbound-heavy practice looking to track all your referrals very effectively? To know about HealthViewX Patient Referral Management System in detail schedule a demo with our team.

How to become a preferred health system for patients and referring physicians?

Healthcare technologies like telehealth, remote patient monitoring, referral management, etc., have simplified the process for health systems to deliver care for their patients. These advancements are uniquely qualified to help health systems attract patients to their facility and build their brand.

So how do you become the preferred health system? What are the strategies behind becoming a preferred health system for your patients, and also for physicians referring patients to your health system?

Care coordination is the responsibility of any system of care and has the potential to transform healthcare delivery, improve the overall effectiveness, and efficiency of any health system. Thus, the key to becoming the preferred health system for patients is to have well-executed care coordination.

For effective care coordination, it is important to connect your entire physician community with specialists and make sure they work in unison to ensure your patients’ health needs are met and the required care is delivered.

If care coordination is done in the right manner, it can improve health outcomes and patient experience along with the growth of the healthcare system. This way, patients, providers, and payers can get benefited. Though there are different definitions for care coordination, in the end all of them point to the same goal which is to become patients’ preferred care provider.

Here are a few tips to become patients’ preferred health system

1. Connecting an entire network of physicians and specialists:

It is important to connect your entire set of physicians and specialists to provide quality care for each and every patient. HealthViewX end-to-end patient referral management connects your entire care network and helps you achieve this with ease.

2. Improve care coordination:

The major priority of all healthcare providers is to achieve care coordination and improve patient care but unfortunately, it still remains a challenge in the industry. The right coordinator may differ from patient to patient. Critical patient information should be readily available for all involved inpatient care. Improved care coordination results in better patient outcomes and patient satisfaction.

3. Effective communication channels and methods:

Software solutions that support upsurge communication and engagement among providers are still lacking. Manual processes (phone call, email, fax, etc.) can lead to fatigue and operational inefficiency. An end-to-end automated solution would help eliminate this challenge. One can improve the quality and continuity of care provided to patients by focusing on improving the transfer of patient information.

4. Gaining the trust of out-of-network providers/physicians:

PCPs prefer hospitals that are easy to work with. It is essential to build and maintain a strong referral base from out-of-network providers/physicians. Hospitals need to work to become a referral partner of choice for physicians and so creating a strong referral base with the referring physicians will pave the way to steady patient inflow. Hospitals should work to encourage out-of-network physicians to become more actively involved in patient care. Lack of communication can lead to poor patient health outcomes.

5. Closing the referral loop:

Planned integration of patient care between providers will help attain better service. As health systems grow more complicated, it is essential to close the referral loop for patient record and safety. The goal of referral loop closure is to track and support patients when they obtain services outside the practice. Closing the referral loop is one of the ways to become a preferred provider.

Health systems need to adopt new healthcare technologies that have the potential to improve patient care and satisfaction. One such technology that health services need to implement is patient referral management. The present referral management is complex, and coordinating care is hard for the health systems. Navigating the healthcare system or care set-ups can be tiring for patients too. Poor coordination can result in reduced quality of care, higher readmission rates, increased no-show rates, referral leakage, and higher cost of care. Better care coordination may result in more satisfied patients.

End-to-end referral tracking and follow-up is a must for effective patient care. Patient Referral Management is one such solution that can solve major challenges faced by health systems in their referral process.

Schedule a demo with HealthViewX Referral Management Solution experts today!

Patient Leakage – A major problem to hospitals and health systems

Patient leakage is a rampant problem that healthcare providers are dealing with on a day-to-day basis. Hospitals/health systems rely on patients being referred by out-of-network physicians.

Poorly handled or mismanaged patient referrals are a significant problem for many health systems that can lead to patient leakage and in-turn revenue loss. Patients being referred out of network is one of the main causes of patient leakage. Health systems are said to lose up to 20% of revenue due to patient leakage.

Patient Leakage – How does this happen?

In some cases patient leakage is inevitable. For example, if a person has to be referred to any particular specialty care or treatment that is unavailable within the network then the referring provider has no choice other than referring the patient out-of-network.

Conversely, there are several other reasons where in-house providers refer patients out of their network

1. Provider Reputation

At times the provider may refer the patient out-of-network depending on the specialist availability, reputation, experience, specialist rating, and patient satisfaction. It can also be due to unavailability of that specialist within the network. Providers are responsible for their patients’ health, so they would ensure they give the best possible treatment or reference for their patients. This is the main example of how patient leakage happens.

2. Unawareness:

New providers who have joined the health system may not be aware of all the specialists available within the care network. There are high chances that providers may refer patients out of network if they are unaware of specialists within the network.

3. The patient chooses the specialist he/she wants:

The provider has to accommodate patient needs and ensure the patient is satisfied with the care provided. Patients’ may choose the provider based on their convenience or preferences like distance, personal preference, specialist rating, etc. Finally, the decision of choosing the specialist completely depends on the patient’s decisions. This is one of the reasons why patient leakage happens.

4. Provider-Patient Relationship:

This is also a prime reason for patient leakage. It is important that the providers build a strong relationship with their patients through quality and value-based care models and if this lacks chances are high that patient may leave the care network.

5. Distance:

Distance and location play a major role in patients opting/choosing their providers. If competing facilities are much closer than the location you refer, patients would prefer the location of their convenience.

Do Health systems understand the amount of revenue loss?

Health systems/ large hospitals do not realize the actual amount of missed revenue due to patient leakage and missed patient appointments. Health systems have lost millions of revenue due to patient leakage and they do not properly track patient leakage. Even though health systems leaders track these leakages it is difficult for them to have a clear understanding of how to reduce this leakage or where and why it occurs in some cases.

A lot of health systems use the EHR system to manage and track their patient referrals and EHR’s can’t show why and where the patient’s left the network. However, efficiency in tracking and managing patient referrals still remains challenging.

HealthViewX HIPAA compliant referral management solution streamlines your end-to-end referral process and manages patient referrals better, improves patient satisfaction, reduces patient referral leakage and gives you clear insights of referral analytics for informed decisions. The best way to avoid patient leakage is to elevate patient experience and ensure you track each and every referral that comes in and goes out of network.

Schedule a demo with us and our patient referral management experts will guide you through our HIPAA compliant patient referral solution.

How to build a strong referral network for your medical practice

Health systems and hospitals need to build a high performing and strong referral network as they serve a large community. For most health systems, out-of-network providers/physicians are the main sources for new patients. Hence in today’s highly competitive healthcare market, it is crucial for the health system to build, strengthen and maintain these referral relationships to have a strong referral network.

A strong referral network would need patients, referring physicians and receiving providers to keep a healthy network going. A referral solution has the potential to build a strong referral network.

Here are some reasons as to why you need a solution to build a strong referral network

Health systems need to reduce referral leakage and ensure they don’t refer patients out of their network
Referral coordinators have to ensure timely scheduled appointments for their patients
Health systems need to reduce their no-show rates
Referral coordinators need to coordinate care between the internal and external providers for better patient outcomes.
Hospitals / Health systems need to create and manage a high performing referral network
To obtain more complete and detailed analytics to improve their patient inflow
Track patient status at every stage and ensure referral loop closure

Healthcare providers need to adopt healthcare IT and embrace interoperability. Therefore, the only way to build this strong referral network is to identify and implement the right referral solution for your practice.

HealthViewX Patient referral management solution can bring in the following benefits for the health systems and help strengthen your referral network

Reduced patient no-show rate
Reduced referral leakage
Increase operational efficiency
Patient satisfaction
Increased revenue
Streamlined referral life cycle management

Making small changes in the way health systems handle referrals will help to retain the patients within the network. Thus, retaining patients within the network, giving quality care will lead to better clinical outcomes. HealthViewX patient referral management solution acts as a bridge and enables seamless communication between the referring provider and the receiving provider. It helps in making meaningful decisions on the referral process thus making the change that the health system requires today.

Staying ahead in healthcare technology is imperative as it will bring massive benefits to the day-to-day operations and can empower the practice as a whole. A more streamlined process can lead to patient satisfaction, happier referral sources and patients thus making the network strong through quality care. Once the entire referral process is fine-tuned providers can fully focus on patient care and relationships with referral sources.

Optimizing referral management will help large health systems and hospitals improve overall efficiency and referral network. Data analytics feature will help providers to understand – the referral patterns, the highest referring source, the lowest referring provider, no-show rates, referral leakage, missed appointments, etc. HealthViewX works with each of its clients to understand their current challenges in the referral system and tunes the referral process to overcome these challenges and build a strong referral network.

HealthViewX patient referral management is highly customizable and is used by leading FQHCs, Large Hospitals, Dental Universities, and Specialities. Do you want to build a strong referral network?

Schedule a demo with HealthViewX referral management solution experts today!