Productivity formula for home health?

[MrsBliss22]

Hello! I need some help creating a productivity formula or at least someone pointing me in the right direction please.

My home health workers have 30 patients on their caseloads and are expected to see all patients once a month. Travel time is not reimbursable and that time should not be counted against them. I want to get them raises but the only way to do that is by calculating their productivity.

Any thoughts or suggestions? Thank you.

 

[etaf]

what sort of measurements are you thinking of putting into place ?
Time measurements can be counter productive if not carefully balanced
and example would be the time it takes for an operator on a checkout to scan all the products, as a productivity measure.
Result is all the goods are falling off the end because the customer cannot keep up and pack at the same rate

just an aside, if they are measured and the result will be a pay raise , you need to ensure you are also measure quality of care to balance

what sort of things are you currently measuring

Time of arrival
Time they leave

you would need to factor in different geographic considerations, if 1 case worker has a high dispersed client base and travel time is not included

 

[MrsBliss22]

Thank you for your response!

We were doing zones but the caseloads became too uneven. Travel time could be up to an hour, which is not reimbursable.

So they have 30 patients on their caseloads and are expected to have contact with the patient at least once per month. Contact with the patient is reimbursable and measurable. Any coordination that involves the patient is reimbursable as well. It would all contribute to billable time. My concern is that travel time can vary for every worker and some workers may travel more than others on any given week. More travel may lead to less billable time as a result.

Quality of care is most important in this field (timeliness of documentation, resource coordination, treatment plan goals being met). How can I measure quality of care AND billable minutes?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

 

[MrsBliss22]

If the minimum is 100 billable hours a month, and every worker is expected to work a 40 hour week - how could that translate to productivity?

 

[etaf]

Are you measuring weekly ?

month average is 22days working days (at least thats what I have used in the past for calendar months

=40 * 22
=880 hours per month total hours available
take off a % for non-billable time - your best estimate , training, holiday , sickness , admin, travel etc
say its 75%

660 hours are available for work

Actual billable hours - say was 600 for one team member
600/660 = 91% productive , utilisation


Then if you need to measure if they do contact each client in a month - how do they record that info?
Is this captured somewhere ?

Then can you measure these items - timeliness of documentation, resource coordination, treatment plan goals being met

 

[MrsBliss22]

Very much appreciated!!

 

[etaf]

your welcome, hope that has helped a little - otherwise we can continue ,if you have examples of what you are recording,

 

[MrsBliss22]

Thank you! I could really use your help if you don't mind. In order to meet the agency's standard, all employees must be at a minimum of 65% productivity every month. Home health requires travel time (non reimbursable) which can vary from day to day. It's difficult for me to come up with an estimate of the workers' non reimbursable time per week due to variances. What I do know is that they all need to be at 65% productivity at the minimum to comply with agency standards but I can't figure out how to measure it without having travel time count against them. Does that make sense? Unfortunately, I'm not very good with numbers but I really want to figure something out so my team can get the raises they deserve.

How can I figure out the minimum number of billable hours per week in order for them to meet the standard? I thought 100 billable hours per month would suffice but I'm not positive. If I can give them a target to shoot for everyday, it would help them organize their time accordingly.

Thank you for your patience. I hope I'm making sense!

 

[etaf]

how do you currently capture the information on hours on site by client by employee

If you could pull off some older data and have a look and see the average results

40 hrs week
= 8 hour day
take into account holidays and bankholidays etc
use a year as an idea - which I have done before when measuring productivity against invoiced hours , calls per day

working days in a year
5 x 52 = 260 days

days off for holiday = 25
days off for training = 10
days off sick = 5
days off public holidays = 8

260 - (25-10-5-8) = 212 available days to work

212 / 12 =17.666 days a month
17.666 days * 8 = 141.3 hours per calendar month

Which will include travel time
so if its 1/3rd 33% of the time spent on traveling = 47hrs

so your 100 hours based on the above is probably near
you could just use your actual figures and so you have an auditable trial for the figures and also facts you can present
They will be arguments - I have been in various directors and senior staff meetings pulling this sort of stuff together
But at the end of the day you need a baseline to work to and not a number plucked out of thin air - and if you can get hold of a years worth of historic data - so much the better
Then you can also trend for seasonality if needed

then you can also modify the assumptions as you know how you built up the numbers

then the issue is how do you measure the billable hours ?
do thy submit a time sheet ?

 

[MrsBliss22]

You've been so informative! Thank you!

Billable time is based on direct services provided to the client and any resource coordination on behalf of the client. Documentation, admin, and travel is non billable. The employees enter a billing code when appropriate which then generates the service. I can pull up a daily report and determine how many direct services were provided based on the codes. It is basically a report that breaks down their day.

I inherited this department about a month ago. Previous management did not have any kind of process to determine productivity and travel time would count against them. When I pull up reports over a 6 month period, there is so much inconsistency. Based on feedback I've received, expectations were never set so everyone made their own process. It's all very confusing. I think if I give them solid numbers to aim for, some sort of guidelines, at least they'll know how to better organize their time.