2.4× faster client intake for a multi-branch skilled home health agency

A three-branch Medicare-certified skilled home health agency in the Tampa Bay region processed every new patient referral through a single intake coordinator. That coordinator juggled faxes, EMR portal alerts, physician office follow-ups, insurance verification, and face-to-face documentation—often simultaneously. Average intake turnaround sat at 46 hours, meaning a patient discharged from a hospital on Friday might not have a start-of-care visit scheduled until the following Tuesday. Referring physicians and discharge planners noticed. Several large health systems escalated to the agency's leadership about slow authorizations, and one hinted that future referrals depended on faster response. During peak discharge windows—Monday mornings and post-holiday weekends—the intake coordinator was so saturated that referrals went unacknowledged for hours, occasionally falling through entirely. The agency was leaving census on the table not because it lacked referral relationships, but because it couldn't process the referrals it already had. Hiring two more in-house intake coordinators was the obvious fix, but the agency had tried that before: the previous two hires left within a year, citing burnout and the stress of managing 24-hour referral volume alone.

Rising Star Solutions deployed a WellSky-trained intake pod structured around the agency's three branches: one dedicated intake specialist per branch, plus a floater who rotated to whichever branch had the heaviest referral load that day. The pod monitored referral sources—fax, EMR portal, and physician office calls—from 6 AM to 11 PM ET, acknowledging every referral within 30 minutes of receipt. We rebuilt the intake workflow into a 14-point Standard Operating Procedure: verify insurance and eligibility, confirm face-to-face documentation is present, validate the plan of care, confirm physician signature, schedule the start-of-care visit, and hand off cleanly to the clinical team. Each step had an owner and a time target, so nothing stalled during shift handovers. We also introduced a daily morning huddle between the intake pod and the clinical schedulers, ensuring same-day SOC visits were staffed. A weekly intake-metrics report went to the administrator showing referrals received, acknowledged, processed, and still pending—giving leadership the visibility they'd been missing.

Intake turnaround dropped from 46 hours to under 12