Market Research Letter: May/June 2009
Providing insights for home care and hospice
May/June 2009
In This Issue
Important Note to Customers: 2007 Data Shipments
Feature Article: Using a New Medicare Regulatory Change to Drive Referrals
Metrics Matter: How Does Your Agency’s Hospice Utilization Compare to State Levels?
Ask the Home Care Data Guru: How do I determine the demand for inpatient hospice beds in my market?
A new regulatory change proposed for 2010 will mean hospitals are no longer reimbursed for Medicare patients who are readmitted with certain diagnoses. In this month’s feature, we discuss this regulatory change and how positioning your home health agency now as a “readmission insurance policy,” will help drive new referrals your way.
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 Shipments
We are currently shipping Phase I reports for home health and hospice market profile sets.
Phase I Reports:
Home Health – Market Share, Demographics & Discharge Disposition/Referral Source
Hospice – Market Share I, Demographics, Discharge Disposition
We anticipate shipping the remainder of the home health reports in between 2 to 3 weeks. Unfortunately, for hospice, we will be able to deliver only three of the remaining reports within that timeframe. The Medicare contractor supplying the data to Healthcare Market Resources left out a crucial data element on some of the claims, forcing a possible Phase III shipment for hospice.
We continue to take orders for the 2007 Market Profile Report sets for home health and hospice and are delivering reports on a timely basis. To place your 2007 Market Profile Reports today please email us at order@healthmr.com.
Feature Article: “Using a New Medicare Regulatory Change to Drive Referrals”
Hospitals will no longer be reimbursed for Medicare patients with heart failure, pneumonia, or heart attack who are readmitted within 30 days of discharge for the same diagnosis. This proposed regulatory change is scheduled to take effect in 2010. So, now is the time for you to show service area hospitals how your agency can be an integral part of the solution to reducing these readmission rates. Here we discuss how this new Medicare ruling presents a great opportunity for agencies to grow their home health referrals.
Read more.
Metrics Matter: “How Does Your Agency’s Hospice Utilization Compare to State Levels?”
What’s the hospice utilization rate in your state? By knowing this statistic, you have a frame of reference to evaluate your agency’s hospice utilization at the state and local levels. In this month’s metric, we present hospice utilization rates at the state level as measured by dividing the number of hospice patients served by the total Medicare eligible population for each state.
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: How do I determine the demand for inpatient hospice beds in my market?
A: One method to gauge market demand is to look at the ratio of general inpatient days to total days in your county of interest and compare it to a best-case scenario. For that scenario, we have chosen Florida, because of its predominant non-profit hospice provider base. (Some for-profit hospices have been known to abuse this aspect of the benefit). Click here to read the entire answer.