As the American population ages, long-term care (LTC) is becoming an increasingly critical component of healthcare. Long-term care providers and companies selling into the LTC market are faced with new opportunities—and new challenges—as demand increases and competition heats up.
One of the core challenges of operating in any market is understanding where the most lucrative opportunities lie. In the world of long-term care, referral volumes are among the most useful performance indicators, and referral pattern analysis applies additional context to transform those indicators into insights.
What is referral pattern analysis?
Referral pattern analysis is the process of tracing referral patterns between providers and analyzing factors like referral volume, network status, and related diagnoses and procedures.
Referral pattern analysis helps LTC providers and vendors identify opportunities for growth in a variety of ways. LTC providers may court out-of-network healthcare professionals (HCPs) with high referral volumes for partnership or employment, or seek to improve engagement with in-network referring physicians who are sending patients outside their network.
They might also leverage referral insights to target and engage patients directly.
LTC vendors can use referral pattern analysis to spot high-value providers or patient populations who can benefit from their services.
Referral pattern analysis can also be applied geographically to identify regional growth patterns, provider behavioral trends, and more.
For instance, our data shows a correlation between population density and referral volume. All 10 of the top hospitals are in or near a large metropolitan area with high patient concentrations. With larger patient populations to care for, these hospitals are referring more patients to long-term care facilities or other specialist provider types.
To start incorporating referral pattern analysis into your business strategy, you’ll need to acquire referral data. Unless you have access to a robust, in-house all-payor claims dataset, you’ll likely need to work with a vendor to source this intelligence.
When shopping for data vendors, you should prioritize those that offer visual analytics along with the raw data. Keep reading to learn why.
Why use a visual referral pattern analytics tool?
A good visual analytics tool makes it easier and faster to identify market trends. Features like interactive maps, charts, and tables demonstrating referral patterns between hospitals and LTC facilities accelerate insight acquisition and simplify the process of communicating those insights with colleagues and stakeholders.
The right tool will offer visual analytics for a variety of LTC providers, including skilled nursing facilities (SNFs), hospices, and home health agencies (HHAs).
With this capability, users can segment the data by market, patient volumes, admission rates, and even diagnosis-related group (DRG). Users should also be able to target specific facilities to understand where they refer patients and from whom they receive patients.
Most common diagnoses referred to long-term care centers
Interactive maps are especially useful analytical tools, as they visually highlight regional trends, population dynamics, and market share.
Long-term care referral volumes by state
Start putting referral patterns to work
Want to see firsthand how a visual analytics tool can help you find new opportunities for your business? Definitive Healthcare’s visual dashboard is just a few clicks away.
DHC Visuals integrates billions of all-payer medical claims and other healthcare data into customizable dashboards, including:
- Technology vendor market share
- Financial comparisons
- Quality performance tracker
- Therapy area analytics
- Procedure area analytics
- Referral analytics
Definitive Healthcare users can leverage these data families to pinpoint ideal opportunities, target contacts for engagement, and shape their engagement strategies.
Sign up for a free trial today for an up-close view of DHC Visuals and the rest of our healthcare commercial intelligence on providers, facilities, procedures, and more.
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