Intake may be your company’s weakest link. How and why you should maximize their potential?
Staffing challenges continue to be a huge concern for many agencies with many filling the intake department with non-clinical employees. Sales teams may be driving referrals that are not triaged. New regulations require greater details about the patient to be in your records -items such as immunizations, medications, and procedure dates; which many patients cannot provide.
Intake may currently be your weakest link but greatest unused asset!
- Consider utilizing intake to call physicians’ offices to obtain labs, immunizations, test results, and medication lists, before the nurse goes to admit the patient. This will save many hours positively impacting revenues and reducing staff burnout. The Home Health OASIS now requires these items to be documented on every patient.
- Using clinicians in intake can help triage the referral. Do the Face-to-face and progress notes detail why this patient is being referred to Home Health and the treatments ordered? Is the referral valid for the reason the patient is being seen in the home and does the progress note agree? Simple higher-level triage can save the admission team many hours in research or documentation enhancement and or correction later.
- Create checklists of items required for the OASIS which could be collected during the intake process. DR orders, labs, results, procedure dates, medication lists, names, and contact information on the legal representative, scheduling the admission with all necessary parties present, allergies.
- Triage the patient records at admission for the potential to recertify, prevention of LUPA, or re-hospitalization.
- Intake can aid in revenue by calling facilities and hospitals to determine if the payer for the bed they are in is skilled or non-skilled.
- Do you have comorbidities listed to support coding?
- Is the patient on an antibiotic? Have they had an infection reported in the last 60 days?
- Does the patient have an Advanced Directive and what does it state?