Home Health Benchmarks – Q1 2014 Part II

The 4 biggest home health providers in the US released their financial data for the first quarter of 2014. In the last post, we discussed mixed results and an overall profit margin of just less than 1%.

Some publicly trade home health organizations release more data than others. Gentiva, Amedisys and Almost Family release the most data while LHC Group releases the least out of the four.

Two additional benchmarks that you need to make sure you have readily available on a monthly, quarterly and yearly basis is: HHRGs and cost per visit. To make your agency’s comparison against a national company, the benchmarks are summarized below.

The average reimbursement per episode for 3 of the big 4 did drop 3.4% or $111 when comparing the first quarter of 2014 to the first quarter of 2013. This is a direct result of changes to reimbursement as well as continued declines in usage of home health due to regulatory requirements. Your agency will likely experience a similar decrease for the first quarter of 2014 when you compare it against 2013.

 

Home Health HHRGs Benchmarks Q1 2014

(**Amedisys made an accounting adjustment that did not produce a HHRG year to year change.)

 

Overhead costs as well as increases in employee benefits and administrative costs are continuing to push up the average cost per visit. Only two companies, Amedisys and Almost Family release their cost per visit. On average, the cost per visit increased over 7% or $5.52 per visit compared to the same time in 2013.

Home Health Cost Per Visit Q1 2014

Overall, expenses are up and revenue is down. Continued tightening, cost cutting and the addition of new service lines and offerings will only help to defray reduced reimbursement. If you have any questions on the data or setting up a dashboard so you can track home health benchmarks, please let me know!

Lance