Hendricks Behavioral Hospital Reimagines Referrals with Concord Care Intake
The intake team at Hendricks Behavioral Hospital was swamped. Meeting a daily flood of referrals with faster dispositions was an essential, yet elusive, goal for Hendricks, which opened in 2021 in Plainfield, Ind., and is part of the US HealthVest network. Getting a handle on that incoming data would not only make life easier for the intake team, it also would lead to a higher bed census and better service utilization at the 112-bed facility, which admits around 270 patients a month, offering them a full continuum of both inpatient and intensive outpatient programs for adults and adolescents.
To achieve financial performance and access to care goals, incoming referrals needed to be reviewed, and an acceptance decision made, within four minutes — otherwise a perfect candidate for Hendricks could be accepted at another facility. However, the documents driving those decisions often arrived incomplete or with essential data buried several pages deep.
Meeting that flood of referrals with faster dispositions was an essential goal for Hendricks. Getting a handle on that incoming data would not only make life easier for the intake team, it also would lead to a higher bed census and better service utilization.
Those goals, along with other positive outcomes, have been achieved with Concord Care Intake. This collaborative, centralized referral management application streamlines referral processing by collating incoming information from a variety of sources, including walk-ins, fax, phone calls and soon email, allowing staff to collaborate and triage clinical evaluation more rapidly. The intuitive user interface also provides data insights and reporting tools so leaders can address operational inefficiencies and make more informed business decisions. Plus, Care Intake works seamlessly with existing infrastructure, including fax, email, and other systems, causing little if any disruption to current environments during its implementation.
Easy implementation, immediate results, ongoing responsive support
“Concord Care Intake has created significant efficiencies for our intake and referral department,” says Wendy Taylor, MSW, LCSW, Director of Assessment and Referrals at Hendricks Behavioral Hospital, Plainfield, Indiana. “It streamlines the referral-review and dispositioning workflow, saving our intake coordinators significant time, and also saving intake directors nearly two hours per day through its automated analytics and reporting.”
Yet even as they knew there were inefficiencies in how referrals were processed, the Hendricks team also knew that they couldn’t afford downtime while improvements were made. Concord’s ability to bring Care Intake online alongside its existing suite of fax services without interrupting the process was essential, says Taylor, who has been involved in bringing five electronic health records, or EHR, systems live at different agencies over her career. Another key differentiator for Hendricks is Concord’s customized service and support to meet the facility’s specific workflow needs.
“More than 80% of our referrals and 75% of admissions come via fax — it is our lifeline,” she explains. “Without it, my hospital does not exist. That line could not go down, and during the implementation everything kept working. “The Concord team came and provided individual training, which helped us get up and running very quickly. Their ongoing training and support have been very valuable as well. Recently I asked for two payers to be added and it was done in 20 minutes. I probably throw three new ideas a week at Concord for new features, and they are always very receptive.”
Analytics, reports save time, improve efficiencies
What’s more, the intelligent data-gathering capabilities of Care Intake also allow Taylor, Chief Executive Officer Ryan Gallagher, and other leaders to explore process improvements, uncover and solve issues, and build pathways to better business outcomes. And it does so in seconds.
“When my CEO asks about our numbers, I don’t have to flip through multiple pages and hand-count any longer,” Taylor says. “I can look at Care Intake’s dashboards and reports and give him an answer in seconds. When I open Care Intake, I know immediately if we have received referrals, the time to disposition, how many referrals we have lost and other information I need. I can monitor those metrics and get that information instantly.”
The team also can problem-solve quickly, she adds, noting that “When I recently compiled a monthly report, I could see where we only accepted 12 out of 30 referrals from a particular source. With Care Intake I was able to look at the notes and discovered an issue with a phone number that was blocking information verification. By working with the provider to fix that, we hope to improve our acceptance percentage from that source significantly.”
Productivity improvements are gained elsewhere as well. Taylor reports that the intake staff is saving two hours a day by not having to create a call log (US HealthVest’s daily activity summary report) any more. What’s more, she adds that Care Intake saves her countless hours.
“I prepare a nightly report, and before it was 30 minutes of gathering information, then keying it into a spreadsheet. Now I download a report and send it in two minutes — if that. It is a much less labor-intensive endeavor. I can easily move between dashboards that rack referrals and staff activity, and those for higher-level management functions. I also have the ability to review and filter information, so I can do things like provide our business development office with information about where referrals are coming from, how many we are accepting and losing — and why.”
Over time, as Concord Care Intake continues to help Hendricks meet patient care and operational goals, it will become an even more essential part of the facility’s IT backbone, says CEO Gallagher.
“We’ve seen a 50% to 60% increase in efficiency,” he says. “Our average bed-fill now is 75%. With Concord Care Intake we hope to get that up to 85% or even 90% each month. We hope to eventually interface Concord Care Intake into a bed board, so we can have intake and census all in one place.”
Company
Hendricks Behavioral Hospital
Industry
Behavioral Health
Headquarters
Indiana
Website
www.hendricksbehavioralhospital.com
The Problem
Hendricks Behavioral Hospital was losing referrals due to a slow, inefficient intake process. The slow incoming data stream was also creating delays in patient care, as well as a complicated, time-consuming reporting process.
The Solution
Hendricks implemented Concord Care Intake for intake-referral processing and reporting, achieving:
- Faster referral processing
- Improved “door to floor” times for patients
- Speedier data delivery to care teams, resulting in faster care decisions
- Dashboards that have yielded significant time savings in data collection and reporting
- AI-driven analytics for assessing and improving intake workflows
- Real-time, referral source analytics for improved business development