Electronic referrals are a high priority with 70% of home health and hospice organizations reporting an increase in requests for referral data to be sent electronically over the past one to two years, according to a new Brightree survey.
Brightree interviewed home health, hospice providers on their referral sources. It found 60% of referring providers said they would switch to a new post-acute care provider if it was able to accept electronic referrals. However, the results showed that only 4% of home health and hospice organizations were able to accept referrals from an electronic medical records system.
“Interoperability is no longer an option, but an essential aspect of any home health and hospice business,” said Nick Knowlton, Brightree vice president of strategic initiatives. “We were pleased to find users of our Brightree home health and hospice solution were among respondents reporting the highest ability to receive electronic referrals properly, but there’s still tremendous opportunity to continue bridging the gap.”
The reliance on manual labor is taking a toll on post-acute providers’ bottom lines. Almost two-thirds of the organizations that participated require several full-time equivalent employees each month to track down data and documents that could be done using an EMR system, Brighttree said.
Many home health and hospice organizations said they realize the need to integrate technology into their business. Almost a third of them said they are planning to expand their efforts into interoperability this year. About the same amount said they would switch EMR systems if they found one that could better support their interoperability needs.
