What does “intake” mean to the average person? “Induction in the armed services” is a standard response! It’s a dated, institutional term, so get rid of it! (Even “admissions” connotes the wrong thing to most consumers because they think it means they’ll have to receive hospice care in a hospital.)

Call it what it is (or should be)! Instead of these industry terms that have no relevance or appeal to potential patients and families, why not call it your “Customer Service Center?” After all, it provides many of the services of one:

We hear it from “liaisons” all the time: “Well, I just stopped by to say hello and see if the family had any more questions. I was in the hospital anyway, so I thought I’d check with them. It really wasn’t a visit, so I didn’t write it down.”

It really was a visit: Every face-to-face contact with a patient or family is a visit, period. You need to increase admissions, and if the program rep or nurse is going back multiple times to get (or not get) the consent signed, then you need to know that. Multiple visits represent a performance problem that needs to be addressed.

And what was the outcome? So if your staff is making multiple visits, are they then documenting the outcome? If there’s no documentation, you can’t help them. And if they’re not reporting multiple visits because they know it’s a performance problem, what are they doing all day?

Make sure that every visit has a coded result and check the reason codes if nothing happened! 

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In their well-intended desire to tell callers about the wonderful hospice benefit, referral coordinators often automatically say that the nurse will visit 2 - 3 times a week and the aide usually is 3 - 5 times.

While in some cases this may be true, it’s inappropriate for us to say this to a caller when we haven’t even assessed the situation. It can also set a troublesome expectation that this is the standard. Then, at the visit, if the assessment nurse says that nursing visits will be once a week, the family may feel that they’re not getting the full benefit.

If callers ask: Tell them that the nurse will put together a team schedule based upon the needs of the patient and family. If they really push about nurse visit frequency, tell them that at a minimum it’s once every 2 weeks, and usually once a week.

Volunteers and aides: It’s also inappropriate to give away volunteers or aides over the phone. While they certainly are a key benefit, tell callers that “the nurse will talk to you about the support services that we have should your family need assistance with personal care or other help.”

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Question: You get a call from a daughter whose father is in the hospital. She inquires about your service and you schedule a visit. After you hang up, you fill in the referral form. Who do you list as the referral source?

Most hospices code the referral source as “family or friend” because a family member made the call. But how did they hear about you? The only case in which the family/friend is the referral source is:

It’s so easy for call center and admissions staff to fall into a “wehaveitis” mode when asked by callers or families what hospice care is.

Focus on their situation: When they ask about your program, don’t assume that that’s your cue to start your “spiel.” Instead, tell them you’ll be happy to give them information, but first ask what their situation is and why they called you today.

Tip: When you hear the term “spiel,” stop it right then! For all the “we hate anything that says sales” feedback from your team, the use of this term is as sleazy and offensive as it gets!

Use the nutshell statement: Here’s a simple statement that uses family-friendly, real world terms to describe what your program does:

Hospice is a patient and family support service that: