Home health referrals fall out before start of care for a handful of repeat reasons. Referral drop-off is measurable,if you track where they drop and why, you can fix it. Senior management should own the funnel and the fixes.
Common root causes
Eligibility or payer says no. Face-to-face missing or out of window. Order doesn’t match the face-to-face. Prior auth required but not obtained or delayed. Patient or family declines or can’t be reached. Capacity: you can’t get a clinician there in time. Each of these is fixable with process,if you measure it.
How to fix it
Log every referral and mark where it stopped: eligibility fail, F2F/order issue, auth pending, patient, capacity, other. See referral volume and conversion tracking for funnel metrics. Review weekly: which bucket is biggest? Fix that first. Often it’s F2F/order (add a pre-SOC check) or auth (verify and document earlier). When you improve conversion, tell your referral sources,it builds trust and can increase volume.
Cost of inaction
Every referral that doesn’t convert is lost revenue and a signal to the source that you’re slow or disorganized. We have a Referral Drop-Off Tracker + Fix Checklist you can download: funnel stages, reason codes, and action steps by cause. Use the button below to get it.