Home Health And Hospice Leaders Work To Improve The Bottom Line

Simione Financial Monitor Adds Staffing Benchmarks, Announces Leadership Advisory Group to Support Improvements in Financial Performance

News provided by

Simione Healthcare Consultants

Apr 28, 2014, 10:30 ET

HAMDEN, Conn., April 28, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- The Simione Financial Monitor, an automated benchmarking tool that is transforming financial performance for home health and hospice agencies, has added real-time administrative staffing benchmarks to its analysis and reporting capabilities. Through the collaboration of a team of Simione Financial Monitor's Leadership Advisory Group, this proven industry resource now has greater capability to drive business results and improve cost management decisions in an industry facing escalating reimbursement challenges.

"Demand for home health and hospice care is high, yet reimbursement streams are threatened by many changes in regulation, payment systems and greater demand for quality outcomes," explains Rob Simione, Vice President of the Simione Financial Monitor. "With home health rebasing and changes in the hospice payment model, it is vital for agencies to be as efficient as possible and to have the right information available to make sound decisions about how to streamline their operations."

The new staffing benchmarks and reports now allow agencies to compare staffing for their billing, marketing, intake, information technology and clinical management departments. These added capabilities bring new insight for home health and hospice agencies to improve their profit margins, cost efficiencies and operational performance with the most up-to-date industry benchmarks. In 2013, Simione Financial Monitor clients using the tool for the full year were able to increase their gross margin by 2 percentage points, according to Rob Simione.

The decision to create the staffing benchmarks was a collaborative effort from the Simione Financial Monitor Board of Directors and the Simione Financial Monitor Leadership Advisory Group, a voluntary group of home health and hospice financial leaders from across the U.S. who use this financial tool and were eager to provide feedback on ways to improve benchmarking for home health and hospice services.

Josh Sullivan, Director of Financial Planning & Analysis for the VNA of Greater Philadelphia and member of the Advisory Group says, "The Simione Financial Monitor Advisory Group has been a useful resource in determining the future enhancements of the benchmarking reports. We felt that agencies would greatly benefit from the administrative staffing ratio benchmarks, especially at a time when staffing ratios are so important to managing overall cost and quality of care."

Members of the Simione Financial Monitor Leadership Advisory Group include:

Member	Title	Organization
Josh Sullivan	Director, Financial Planning & Analysis	VNA of Greater Philadelphia, PA
Callie Cramer	Manager, Financial Reporting & Analysis	CareSouth Homecare Professionals, Augusta, GA
Dennis Lehman	Director of Finance	Lutheran Home Care & Hospice, Chambersburg, PA
Sarani Banerji	Director, Financial Planning & Reimbursement	Visiting Nurse Services of New York, NY
Kurt Baumgartel	Chief Operating Officer	Celtic Healthcare Inc., Mars, PA
Mary Bartlett	Vice President, Finance & CFO	3 HC Home Health & Hospice, Goldsboro, NC
Rich Corcoran	Chief Business Officer & CFO	VNA Community Healthcare, Guilford, CT
Shawn Ricketts	Chief Financial Officer	Heritage Home Health and Hospice, Albuquerque, NM
Martha Fagan	Director of Business Operations	Baptist Health – BHHHN, Little Rock, AR
Tyler Traucht	Chief Financial Officer	ViaQuest, Dublin, OH

Simione Financial Monitor is integrated with Allscripts, McKesson, Homecare Homebase, ContinuLink and HealthWyse software, making real-time benchmarking accessible to thousands of home health and hospice organizations across the U.S.

For more information about Simione Financial Monitor, visit Simione.com or call 844-215-8825.