The home health agency industry is steadily going through a whirlwind of changes. Operating margins are becoming tighter and agencies are beginning to depend more heavily on reimbursements. In order to maximize reimbursements, agencies should closely examine workflows and strategize how to become more efficient and improve productivity.
The standard business model for a home health agency typically includes a large staff that mostly work remotely. With this in mind, you can easily understand the challenges and obstacles missed visits pose. If a patient misses a scheduled visit, staff time and resources are automatically lost.
Missed visits result in a lose-lose situation for both providers and patients. When a patient misses a visit, your agency’s workflows are disturbed and more time is spent on rescheduling. Missed visits can also result in higher costs of care delivery, while staff and equipment go underutilized. Most importantly, missed visits negatively affect the clinical outcomes of your patients and increase the possibility of complications and hospital readmissions.
Reducing Missed Visits with Automated Outreach
- – Out-of-date schedules
- – Caregivers become ill and can not make the appointment
- – Caregivers are delayed due to traffic
- – Patients forget about their scheduled appointments
Although many of these reasons are unavoidable, patients forgetting about their scheduled appointments is easily remedied. By providing frequent reminders to patients about their upcoming visit, you ensure their appointment is top of mind and they are prepared. The challenge, however, is that agencies don’t always have the resources to manually call every patient and remind them of their scheduled visits. This is where technology becomes a great asset to both your patients and your staff members.
CipherHealth’s automated outreach technology works to reduce the occurrence of missed appointments by reminding patients of upcoming visits. CipherHealth’s home health visit reminders serve as an easy and cost-effective solution to remind, confirm and if need be, reschedule home visits. Not only does this work to curb the incidence of missed appointments, it is also essential in promoting effective agency-patient interaction and in extension improving the overall patient experience.
To learn more about CipherHealth’s visit reminder solution, request a free demo today.
