Referral Rejection Rate for Hospice Reaches ‘All-Time High’ of 41%

By Robert Holly | February 18, 2022

Skyrocketing demand for post-acute care services has put providers in a pickle, often forcing them to turn away new hospital referrals due to limited labor capability.

This problem has been particularly pervasive for home health agencies, but it’s increasingly an issue in the hospice setting as well, according to the latest data from CarePort, a WellSky company.

Because of this supply-and-demand imbalance, hospice providers are rejecting new referrals at record levels, with hospital patients in need of end-of-life care having to wait in the acute care setting about a day longer.

“I would say that the story we are seeing across post-acute providers – skilled nursing facilities (SNFs), home health care and hospice – is very similar,” Tom Martin, director of post-acute care analytics at CarePort, told Hospice News. “I might just boil it down to: We are seeing very high demand for post-acute services. And we are now experiencing sort of this supply shortage of available post-acute beds and staff to care for people.”

On the demand side of the equation, referral volume for CarePort’s hospice clients reached 113% of pre-pandemic levels in January, after hitting 118% of pre-COVID levels at the end of last year.

In actuality, the only time CarePort’s hospice providers saw lower-than-normal volumes was in the spring of 2020. That didn’t last long, however, with home health agencies also experiencing a V-shaped volume recovery.

Due to rising demand and clinician burnout, hospice operators haven’t always been in a position to “say yes” to new referrals from the acute care setting.

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