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Key Performance Indicators Home Health Care Agencies Must Track

Andjelka Prvulovic
Last update on:
March 7, 2024 8:06 AM
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Tightening budgets and keeping up with ever-evolving regulations, policies, and processes in this dynamic industry have put a lot of pressure on home health care agencies. 

That’s why tracking key performance indicators for home health care has become critical, enabling agencies to have a clear insight into their business performance and improve it.

The only way agencies can confirm that their business objectives are being fulfilled is by tracking and measuring their performance. 

However, to be able to measure and track business objectives, agencies need a few KPIs. 

This post walks you through 12 of the most common key performance indicators for home health care

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What Are KPIs?

Key performance indicators are quantifiable or measurable values that reveal whether an organization is accomplishing its goals. As such, they are important and useful to each and every employee. 

Most organizations set objectives, and KPIs are used to show the direction an organization is moving into by providing objective and comparable data, expressed by numbers.

If an agency is working without tracking key performance indicators in healthcare, it can create vagueness around its performance. In addition, it will soon become challenging for the agency to compare its progress over different periods. 

KPIs need to address all aspects of a business, from the quality of care and client conversion to HR, marketing, and finance. The data collected by tracking KPIs provides statistics and enables a home healthcare agency to analyze its progress over a specific time, compare it to its industry peers and look for ways to improve its performance.

Regarding key performance indicators for home health care, they should cover all key areas like overall client satisfaction, on-time client visits, employee retention, reporting, and billing. 


Why Do Home Healthcare Agencies Need to Track KPIs?

KPIs have enormous value in moving a home health agency forward. Besides their obvious rationale - the need to measure data in areas critical to success, there is another crucial reason for tracking we mustn’t forget - their human effect.

Indeed, key performance indicators for home health care are most effective when the entire staff is familiar with them and is using this data to improve their performance. 

If an agency wishes to strengthen its processes and ask its staff to hit specific targets, it also has to measure their efforts. Employee motivation will be hard to maintain if there is no way to measure whether they have succeeded or not.

By tracking KPIs for your primary goals, you will know if your team is reaching home health productivity benchmarks, and you can implement incentives based on their achievements. At the same time, your team will understand that KPIs hold them accountable for meeting their performance goals. 

Which KPIs Should Your Agency Track?

For your data exploration to be useful, It’s essential to pick the right key performance indicators for home health care. A decision on which KPIs to track can vary significantly from one agency to another, depending on their plans and performance goals. 

Your KPIs should reflect both your tangible goals and organizational priorities. So, to choose which KPIs you should track, start with identifying the activities that impact your objectives. Besides that, try to keep all your effective KPIs SMART:

* Specific: clearly defined and not too broad.

* Measurable: easy to quantify.

* Attainable:  easy to obtain.

* Realistic:  pragmatic and practical.

* Timely: measurable regularly and frequently- monthly or quarterly rather than annually.

These criteria can help you narrow down the KPIs, producing more effective performance measures. 

Below you will find some of the key performance indicators for home health care that we suggest tracking. For a better understanding of their purpose, we’ve divided them into four sections: quality of care, financial, human resources, and marketing.

1. Quality of Care KPIs

When working in the home health care industry, the well-known motto “the client should always come first” is far more than just a phrase. Monitoring the quality of care you provide is critical for your business’s success, as it can help you guarantee positive client outcomes and ensure efficient reimbursement for service.

To keep your agency's performance at a high level, you need to ensure that the services you’re providing are being delivered according to your client’s personal needs, at the right place, and at the right time. Below you will find four key performance indicators in healthcare that fall into this section, that you might benefit from tracking.

Average Length of Service

You can calculate it by dividing the number of all active clients during a time period by the number of months care was provided.

You can use this KPI to measure client satisfaction - if it is above average, this KPI suggests that the agency is most likely providing quality care and is successful in retaining its clients.

Service Failures

This KPI shows the number of events in a specific period where your home agency has not met the standard of service due to missed or late home visits, device failures, lack of communication, or failure to bring necessary items. 

You can measure it by tracking the following data:

* Are your agency’s caregivers on the locations they should be? Electronic Visit Verification (EVV) will provide your agency the proof of the visit. If you’re using GPS software solutions, such as Timeero, you will be notified of each caregiver’s arrival and departure from clients’ locations, providing real-time proof of visits for billing. GPS-based visibility will also help you ensure caregivers’ safety and efficiency.

timeero segmented mileage
TImeero's Segmented Tracking Feature

Certain tools, such as Timeero, may help you get detailed data on your caregivers’ performance hassle-free. For example, Timeero’s segmented trackng feature can show you how many trips caregivers had during their working hours, how much time and mileage it took them to travel from one location to another, and how much time they spent at each of their clients.

* Are caregivers punctual when it comes to delivering the services? When home health care is delivered on time, it helps you improve outcomes and client satisfaction.  

* Did the visit duration meet the plan? If there are any differences between the duration and the plan, it might signal that a plan needs a revision or that a caregiver underserving or spending too much time with clients. The length of the visit can also be seen using the geofence time clock solutions, such as Timeero. Knowing this helps the coordinator intervene quickly and appropriately.

* Was service provided according to the plan? Any variances to the care plan should be further investigated. Besides, a platform for secure communication and record-keeping can guarantee that any changes to the plan are communicated and executed in a timely fashion.

You can easily track this KPI by calculating the number of times a caregiver was late, skipped the visit, or did not provide care following the plan. It's important to keep track of this KPI as it shows the quality of service that you provide to your client base.

Client Turnover

Calculate this KPI by dividing the number of clients that stopped services during a specific period by the total number of clients with the agency during the same time period.

If the client turnover is significant, it might imply poor client satisfaction and the low quality of the service provided.

Client Satisfaction

Agencies that participate in the Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems program can gain valuable insight into the client satisfaction and identify their improvement when this KPI is tracked over time. As home health quality measures reports are public, they can compare the results with other providers.

Agencies that are not CMS-certified can develop their own surveys to establish client satisfaction and determine their own strengths or weaknesses.

2.Financial KPIs

We’ve chosen this set of four financial key performance indicators for home health care because they are the most critical to understanding the overall health of your business. If you monitor these metrics regularly and use them to guide your actions, it will put you in control of your home health care agency to achieve the results you want. 

Revenue

To put it simply, revenue is income that comes into your agency from paying clients and can help you determine how the business is doing. 

The formula for calculating revenue is very straightforward: the number of clients multiplied by the average per unit provided.

Revenue can show an agency clearly how much money it is bringing in from its services. You can track changes in this KPI to determine if, for example, your marketing strategies are working or how the price changes affect the demand for your services.

You can analyze it from a monthly or yearly standpoint, depending on the purpose of your exploration. To gain insight into your cash flow, you will need to look at your monthly revenue. On the other hand, annual revenue is significant for determining whether you are paying yourself and your staff properly. 

Monthly Expenses

Monthly expenses include all expenditures that your agency has each month. They usually consist of rent, utilities, employee salaries, insurance, taxes, professional services, marketing, advertising, technologies, and more.

Tracking your monthly expenses can help you set your priorities, achieve your goals, and protect your business from cash flow challenges.

Profit

Profit is the financial gain you keep when you subtract all the expenditures from revenue. You can calculate it by subtracting direct and indirect expenses from all revenue earned. Direct costs can include staff salaries and various material purchases, while indirect costs include rent,  utilities, etc.

Track this KPI to identify profit drivers - internal and external factors that affect your business's profit. This way, you can develop effective strategies to maximize your profit and achieve better growth results.


Besides financial profit drivers, such as price or service volume, non-financial profit drivers are also significant to consider. Even though they are not expressed in dollars, they hugely impact your profit. They include customer satisfaction, productivity, service quality, employee satisfaction, etc. Some of these drivers are mentioned above and below, as key performance indicators for home health care.


If your agency is just starting out, you may not see a profit for a while until your employee salaries meet market rates. 

Profit Margins


Profit margin is the percentage of profit that remains after you've paid all expenses.  You can determine your agency's profit margin ratio by deducting total expenses from total revenue and dividing this sum by total costs. 

If you suspect that your agency could lose money in some care scenarios, you should know your acceptable margins before taking on specific clients. 

Understanding the principles around profit margins is crucial, especially for start-ups looking to grow the business. 

3. Human Resources KPIs

In an industry with such high churn, your most valuable asset are your employees. That's why it's crucial to pay attention to all the warning signs that may point to their dissatisfaction with their job or that may lead to caregiver burnout. By tracking the following key performance indicators for home health care, you can identify the problems early, and take appropriate measures.

Caregiver Turnover

Caregiver turnover is the percentage of caregivers that left your agency within a given time frame. To calculate this KPI, divide the number of caregivers left by the number of all caregivers that worked during a given time.

Tracking this number will give you an insight into your employees’ job satisfaction, how successful you are at retaining caregivers and whether your agency is more or less effective when compared to the industry as a whole.

Client Vs. Caregiver Ratio

This KPI shows the number of caregivers available per client. Over time, it may indicate whether your agency is understaffed, leading your caregivers to burnout and reducing the quality of service, or overstaffed, causing too high overhead expenses.

4. Marketing KPIs

You have to ensure your marketing dollars are put into the right purpose. For the beginning, you can start by following these two marketing key performance indicators for home health care we’ve selected.

Top Referral Sources

Your top referral sources are valuable resources that need continuous attention. A large part of your marketing efforts should nurture those sources so that they will continue to send new prospects your way. Tracking your referral sources will also help you establish which marketing efforts are not working to avoid wasting the marketing budget.

Conversion Rates

Exploring how often inquiries turn into admissions will help you answer various questions. To calculate it, divide the number of clients admitted by the total number of people who made an inquiry about your services in the same period.

Such analysis can help you determine whether there is anything in the process that makes the prospective clients give up using your agency's services. 

Which KPIs Should Your Home Health Care Agency Track?

The list of key performance indicators for home health care we’ve suggested is essential but far from final.

A decision on which KPIs your agency will track and how deep in the metrics you’re willing to go will depend primarily on your business organizational priorities and tangible goals. Certain software solutions, such as Timeero, can help you keep track of essential KPIs smoothly so that you can act upon the findings timely.


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AUTHOR
Andjelka Prvulovic

Andjelka is a sociologist turned digital marketer. She specializes in creating content for SaaS and software companies. When she’s not researching the most effective employee management techniques, Andjelka loves cooking, reading, and fighting for human rights.

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