Five Ways to Make Your Facility More Profitable

Despite new challenges like PDPM, as well as unprecedented low occupancies, you still have two intertwined goals: provide high-quality care to your residents while increasing profitability. Here are five ways to help you improve the bottom line of your SNF and your reputation as a desirable facility.

1. Understand Your Referral Network

If you don’t know your market, it’s impossible for you to create a balanced census that generates profitability. Therefore, it’s important to ask yourself several questions, including:

• Do my facility’s care capabilities match the residents being discharged from hospitals?
• Is the number of referrals from our hospital partners going up or down?
• Do we need to expand or refocus our services to meet local needs and/or get higher reimbursements?

2.Make the Pre-Admission Process Count

The work you put into the pre-admission phase could be the most important step towards improving your profitability – and proactively managing each resident’s experience. You should screen your leads both clinically and financially in order to ensure that you are able to provide the services the resident needs. This also helps to make sure that you are properly paid for the care and services you provide.

3. Implement Facility-Wide Communication and Workflows

From admission to discharge, consistent communication throughout your organization can have a tremendous effect on your billing outcomes. Good communication will result in fewer missed opportunities and unpaid bills.

Try discussing very specific issues in daily stand-up meetings involving clinical, MDS and business office staff. This will help to ensure that everyone know who is being admitted, discharged, and the current and future payer sources for these residents.

4. Don’t Leave Money on the Table

You won’t increase your profitability if your employees aren’t properly following the processes and workflows. If there is no follow-through or follow-up, your poor financial performance is on you and your staff. Supervisors must determine if every step has been followed correctly, and address employees who repeatedly disregard the system.

5. Adopt Integrated, Solution-Oriented Technology

Embracing information technology, particularly when it enables you to collect and analyze data in a single system, ensures more accurate billing and streamlines your clinical and financial processes. The right technology solution enables a broader spectrum of your employees to quickly and easily access resident information, giving them a longer view of each person’s care.

 To learn more about how to make your facility more profitable, download our guide.