Market Research Letter: March/April 2009
Providing insights for home care and hospice
March/April 2009
In This Issue
Important Note to Customers: 2007 Data Availability
Feature Article: Understanding Benchmarks
Metrics Matter: Hospital-Based Home Health Agencies – Market Share by State
Readers Speak Out: Additional Considerations for Projecting Hospice Inpatient Beds
Ask the Home Care Data Guru: Is there Medicare business out there?
Benchmarks can be valuable tools for assessing business performance and finding new growth opportunities. But which benchmarks are most relevant for your home health agency or hospice? That’s what we help you understand in this month’s feature.
At Healthcare Market Resources, it’s our goal to provide your business with the information needed to identify and create growth opportunities. Give me a call at 215-657-7373, or contact me at info@healthmr.com, to talk about ways we can help your company succeed today.
Rich Chesney
President, Healthcare Market Resources, Inc.
P.S. Be sure to read our Note to Customers for an update on the availability and shipment of 2007 Market Profile Reports.
Important Note to Customers: 2007 Data Availability
We are currently building the 2007 home health and hospice claims database, having only recently received this data in raw form from Medicare. Manipulating millions and millions of records is a formidable task, and the information to produce certain reports is available earlier in the process than others. We have decided, therefore, to deliver the report sets in two phases. We anticipate being able to ship the Phase I reports – outlined below – in 2 to 4 weeks. The remaining Phase II reports should be delivered between 3 and 4 weeks after Phase I shipments.
Phase I Reports:
Home Health – Market Share, Demographics & Discharge Disposition/Referral Source
Hospice – Market Share I, Demographics, Discharge Disposition
We are currently taking orders for 2007 Market Profile Reports and shipments will be made based on their receipt. To place your 2007 Market Profile Reports today please email us at order@healthmr.com.
Feature Article: “Understanding Benchmarks”
Benchmarks are valuable tools that can help your home health agency or hospice accurately predict performance and determine new opportunities for growth. In this month’s feature, we discuss what makes a good benchmark and the type of elements that may influence a benchmark’s relevancy to your business.
Read more.
Metrics Matter: “Hospital-Based Home Health Agencies – Market Share by State”
Do hospital-based home health agencies play a significant role in the delivery of Medicare home health services? To help answer that question, this month’s metric takes a look at the Medicare reimbursement for hospital-based home health agencies compared to freestanding agencies on a statewide basis.
Read more.
Readers Speak Out: "Additional Considerations for Projecting Hospice Inpatient Beds"
One of our readers – Bill Musick, a hospice consultant in Hawaii – found last month’s feature article Hospice Inpatient Beds: A Potential Growth Opportunity for Your Hospice very useful. But he wanted to alert our readers that the projections developed using this tool presented an ideal case and that other factors could limit this projection. Click here to read what Bill had to say.
We appreciate Bill’s comments and welcome input from our readers. Share your comments with us today.
Ask the Home Care Data Guru
Looking for some hard-to-find data? In Ask the Home Care Data Guru, we share questions from our subscribers – and our answers. Send us your question today!
Q: My sales reps keep telling me that there is no Medicare business out there. How do I confirm that?
A: Medicare managed care enrollment has been increasing throughout the country, particularly with the private fee-for-service plans. Healthcare Market Resources offers a state level report, which tracks Medicare managed care and traditional enrollment by county over a 4-year period. With this report, you’ll quickly see how many traditional Medicare patients are in your market. Click here to view sample.