by Darcey Trescone, RN, BSN
With the current pandemic, business development activities that were the norm have significantly changed. COVID-19 has shifted the paradigm and our home health and hospice sales executives now must find a new way to work. The inability to visit referral partners is a roadblock for many sales and marketing professionals who rely on face to face communications to promote growth of services for their organizations.
While in attendance at a Trella Health meeting with Teresa Buglione, the company's Director of Services, I was impressed to see technology strategies focused on business development. Let's face it, when a crisis or any significant change occurs in post-acute care, the focus of our entire industry is toward clinical and operational processes. This is out of necessity, but it leaves sales and marketing professionals as an afterthought.
While reviewing the flow of the system and data, Buglione shared with us Trella Health’s vision for assisting business development professionals in the post-acute healthcare space to find a new way of thinking about communication with their referral partners. The use of key data points, even in virtual communications, creates valuable insight for referral partners when deciding if their patients need home health or hospice services and where to refer these patients.
"Differentiating against competitors has always been a challenge for post-acute agencies, and they often have limited time with providers to make their case," stated VP of Marketing Jessica Chew. "COVID-19 presented additional complexity since these agencies were no longer able to visit many physicians and facilities in person. To help our customers maintain and grow partnerships, even while working remotely, we published new resources that help highlight performance to referral partners."
Trella Health has pooled its resource knowledge and available data points into easily consumable strategies and tools for the home health and hospice sales executive. If you are in a sales or marketing role at any level in the post-acute care industry, I highly recommend checking out and sharing the below links with your team. These resources are available to anyone interested.
Michael Neuman, MPH, Director of Data Science, stated, "We know from prior research that COVID-19 disproportionately impacts COPD and CHF patients. By combining data that pinpoints the location of these chronic conditions with our post-acute care analytics, we can assist providers in ramping up coverage in markets where they will be needed most."
As a partner to the acute and post-acute markets, Trella Health felt it imperative that the map also highlight the number of home health agencies in each county. As acute care facilities, such as hospitals, focus on freeing up capacity for the most serious COVID-19 cases, home health providers can serve patients who require care after hospital discharge, regardless of their COVID-19 status. Home health agencies can also treat patients with confirmed COVID-19 cases who do not require hospitalization, allowing acute facilities to direct resources to patients who require more critical care. Finally, understanding the number of COPD+CHF patients per home health agency in a given county can serve as a useful indicator in forecasting staffing and equipment needs.
"Our goal has always been to assist providers and the patients they serve," stated Ian Juliano, CEO of Trella Health. "By creating resources to help acute and post-acute providers respond to COVID-19, we hope to alleviate some of the burden hospitals, home health and hospice agencies are facing so they can continue to focus on caring for patients.”
Norma English, Chief Executive Officer for Hospice Partners of America, sums it up well, "With Trella Health, we found the referral sources we should approach, and just as important, we determined where we should not spend our time. This knowledge guides our liaisons in terms of effective time management and in aiding our decisions for future growth.”
About Trella Health
Trella Health provides post-acute business development leaders with a complete picture of care activity in their service areas so they can explore new opportunities for growth. Deemed an innovator under the CMS "Virtual Research Data Center Program," Trella has access to 100% of Medicare Part A and Part B claims data. Trella analyzes 1.2 billion claims annually and presents relevant insights to nearly 10,000 users so they can build higher-performing care networks, serve more patients, and reduce the cost of care. To learn more go to www.trellahealth.com.
©2020 by Rowan Consulting Associates, Inc., Colorado Springs, CO. All rights reserved. This article originally appeared in Home Care Technology: The Rowan Report. homecaretechreport.com One copy may be printed for personal use; further reproduction by permission only. editor@homecaretechreport.com