Marketing your CMS Hospice Compare scores (Part II – Family experience of care)

Increase your physician referrals by marketing your CMS Hospice Compare Scores. There is an excellent marketing tool available through CMS that many hospice agencies are not utilizing. CMS’s Hospice Compare site provides potential patients and referring physicians with a published track record of how your agency’s performance stacks up to the competition. Physicians want to refer patients to proven hospice providers, so naturally promoting your above average compare scores is an excellent way to boost referrals.

• The Hospice Compare scores are broken down into five categories:

• General Information: Levels of Care

• Conditions

• Location of care

• Family experience of care

• Quality of care

Your agency may not excel in all measures, but you can highlight areas where you do excel and work on the areas where your team is falling behind the national averages.

The Family experience of care section is the important area of the survey where family caregivers of patients who died while under hospice care are asked about their experiences with hospice. These scores can directly affect the success of your agency:

1. Communication with family - This question generally brings a high score by most patients surveyed. A score less than 80% could indicate the need for more interaction from social workers and counselors to help explain the dying experience to overwrought caregivers. (National Average 80%)

2. Getting timely help - Hospice patients can experience agitation, disorientation, and general discomfort which they often cannot articulate to their family caregiver. This can cause severe anxiety for caregivers. An 80% score means your agency is above average in responding to patients and their caregivers. Marketing timeliness is always a good way to increase physician referrals. (National Average is 78%)

3. Treating patient with respect* - This score is a composite percentage of two survey questions: A. Did the team treat the patient with dignity and respect? B. How much to you believe the hospice team really cared about their loved one? A score below 90% to this question is a red flag for your team, not only for potential patients using the hospice compare site, but also for agency administrators. It is an indication of understaffing, overscheduling, and staff performance which is not reflective of the hospice mission. (National average 91%) 

4. Emotional and spiritual support* - This score is a composite percentage of three survey questions: A. How much emotional support was received from the hospice team while their family member was in hospice care? B. How much emotional support they received from the hospice team in the weeks after their family member died? C. How much support they received for their religious or spiritual beliefs? This is a great score to market if your agency recorded a 90% or better. (National Average 90%)

5. Help for pain and symptoms* - Though this percentage is a composite of several questions it is a difficult area of the survey to market as many family members mistake the limitations of medical pain relief with poor pain management. You may want to avoid marketing your results on this question unless you score well above the national average. (National Average 75%)

6. Training family to care for patient* - This is another composite question that focuses mainly on medication education and symptom recognition. A below average score on this question may indicate the need for training modification. (National Average 75%)

7. Rating of this hospice - Family caregivers rate the hospice agency on a scale of 0 – 10. The published score is the percentage of people who rate the agency at 9 or 10. A score less than 80% could indicate the need for a staff review of best practices. (National Average 81%)

8. Willing to recommend this hospice - This score is the yardstick whereby you can measure your agency’s success. Hospice is compassionate care for the dying and their families. If someone is not willing to recommend your agency to help others through this journey, you need to evaluate your staff, your training, and your company mission. (National Average 84%)

Reviewing your agency’s compare scores should be a routine part of your continuous improvement program. Superior patient care and satisfaction are both firm foundations to build your business on. Above average scores can translate to referrals, and we offer a referral building tool to highlight them. Visit the TAG Webstore or call us at 866-232-6477 for more information on our Choosing Hospice Flyer for Physicians, and take the next step in successful Hospice marketing.

*Scores are composite averages of multiple survey questions. 

Marketing your CMS Hospice Compare scores (Part I – General Information)

Increase your physician referrals by marketing your CMS Hospice Compare Scores. There is an excellent marketing tool available through CMS that many hospice agencies are not utilizing. CMS’s Hospice Compare site provides potential patients and referring physicians with a published track record of how your agency’s performance stacks up to the competition. Physicians want to refer patients to proven hospice providers, so obviously, promoting your above average compare scores is an excellent way to boost referrals.

The Hospice Compare Scores are broken down into five categories:

• General Information: Levels of Care

• Conditions

• Location of Care

• Family experience of care

• Quality of care

Your agency may not excel in all measures, but you can highlight areas where you do excel and work on the areas where your team is falling behind the national averages.

1.     Let’s look at the General Information, Level of Care explanation and breakdown:

All Medicare-certified hospices are required to offer 4 levels of hospice care depending on the needs of the patient and their caregiver. 

• Routine home care

• General inpatient care

• Continuous home care

• Respite care

The hospice compare level of care section provides an average daily patient census. That number can be a reflection of the level of care that an agency normally provides. Hospices caring for a smaller number of patients may not be as familiar with complex conditions that require special attention. As a result, marketing your agency’s daily patient census average can yield positive results if your daily number of patients exceeds the national average of 74.8. If your patient number is below the national average, this might be a category that you choose to omit in your print media.

2.     Next is the Conditions category which breaks down patients by their condition.

This data can be especially helpful with target marketing. For instance, if your hospice sees an above average number of cancer patients then you can target oncologists and cancer treatment facility clinicians with specific print media that reflects these numbers and increase your referrals. https://www.tagwebstore.com/choosing-hospice-physicians.php

The National average of hospice patients broken down by primary medical diagnoses:

• Cancer 27.3%

• Dementia 21.2%

• Stroke 9.4%

• Circulatory/heart disease 20.8%

• Respiratory disease 11.9%

• All other conditions 16.1%

3.     The third Hospice Compare section is Location of care:

As you know Hospice care can be provided in many locations. This hospice compare graphic illustrates the locations where your agency has provided care within the data collection period. Marketing this data is generally most helpful for agencies with an inpatient facility. The National averages of hospice care given by location:

• Home 99.8%

• Assisted Living Facility 76.1%

• Nursing Facility 60.8%

• Skilled Nursing Facility 52.5%

• Inpatient Hospital Facility 31.5%

• Inpatient Hospice Facility 17.0%

• All Other Locations 17.6%

Reviewing your agency’s compare scores should be a routine part of your continuous improvement program. Superior patient care and satisfaction are both firm foundations to build your business on. Above average scores can translate to referrals, and we offer a referral building tool to highlight them. Visit the TAG Webstore or call us at 866-232-6477 for more information on our Choosing Hospice Flyer for Physicians and take the next step in successful Hospice marketing.

Marketing your Home Health CMS Scores – (Part III - Patient Survey Results)

The third and final part of our series on Marketing your CMS home health scores is a review of patient surveys. Patients and their families answer survey questions about their home health care experience. The HHCAHPS provides a national standard of comparison among home health agencies and an excellent marketing opportunity.

https://www.medicare.gov/homehealthcompare/search.html is an online consumer resource that gives your agency a recognized marketing platform. The best part is this tool is its absolutely FREE!

1.     Patient survey summary star rating: The more stars the better! The HHCAHPS star rating is a summary of all the patient experience survey results. https://www.medicare.gov/homehealthcompare/About/Patient-Survey-Star-Ratings.html

2.     How often the home health team gave care in a professional way? A lower score in this category is basically a poor staff review, and could indicate the need to educate staff on agency processes and expectations for providing quality care to patients. https://www.tagwebstore.com/caregiver-handbook.php (National Average 88%)

3.     How well did the home health team communicate with patients? Communication is very important for success in many areas of home health care. A score below 85% is an indication that your training program needs to emphasize better communication. (National Average 85%) https://medlineplus.gov/ency/patientinstructions/000456.htm

4.     Did the home health team discuss medicines, pain, and home safety with patients? Along the same lines as the previous question, medication education, pain evaluation, and patient safety at home are basics of home health care. A score below 80% on this question could indicate the need for more training, staff support, or staff evaluations to improve your score. (National Average 83%) https://www.ama-assn.org/residents-students/medical-school-life/6-simple-ways-master-patient-communication

5.     How do patients rate the overall care from the home health agency? Home staffing is nearly impossible to supervise, but HHCAHPS is a direct reflection of your staff performance.  You always want to see this rating in the 90% range! (National Average 84%) https://homehealthcahps.org/Portals/0/HHA_Responsibilities_List.pdf

6.     Would patients recommend the home health agency to friends and family? This question is your money maker! You always want the majority of your patients to be willing to refer your agency! Failing here, is failing! (National Average 78%)

Reviewing your agency’s scores should be a routine part of your continuous improvement program. Superior patient care and satisfaction are both firm foundations to build your business on. Your above average scores can translate to referrals, and we offer a referral building tool to highlight them. Visit https://tagwebstore.com/ or call us at 866-232-6477 for more information on our Outcome Brochures and take the next step in successful home health physician marketing.

Resources: https://www.medicare.gov/homehealthcompare/About/Survey-Results.html , https://www.medicare.gov/homehealthcompare/About/What-Is-HHC.html