The Average Home Health Care Agency is Shrinking

May 12, 2011 - PRLog -- Most home health agencies have experienced downward pressure on their census, and executives often blame increased competition. Brazzell Marketing Agency has recently released a report on their analysis of home health agency cost reports.  According to Brazzell, national data provides mild support for the assumption that the average agency is shrinking due to increasing levels of competition in the industry.  The whole is available as a free, online resource here: http://brazzellmarketing.com/Home-Health-Cost-Reports.html  

As a measure of the growing competition in Medicare certified home health, the graph on this page shows the number of home health agency cost reports submitted each year (hospital cost reports and nursing home cost reports not included).  While the rate of increase has cooled off roughly 30% in the latter years, the number of active home health agencies still seems to be rising sharply each year.  

While the number of patients seen by all home health agencies actually went down 1%, the average census fell 6% from 2008 to 2009.  The median census fell 10%.  As a group, the top 1,000 agencies and the top 2000 agencies saw 2% fewer patients, comparing 2009 to 2008.   This suggests that the increasing number of home health agencies has reduced the size of the average home health agency.  It also suggests that the increased competition is having a greater affect on average size home health agencies than it is on top 20% home health agencies.  

Teresa Rose of Brazzell Marketing Agency states, "Home health agency executives should be aware of how their growth compares to the growth of other agencies in their same market.  Agencies should seek both national or regional data plus local data that helps them know where they stand in their own marketplace."

More information and resources available here:
http://brazzellmarketing.com/Home-Health-Cost-Reports.html

*Calculated after throwing out all the cost reports that did not show a census or showed zero.

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Brazzell Marketing Agency specializes in Home Health Care Marketing, Physical Therapy Marketing, Hospice Marketing, and the marketing success of other referral-based health care providers. Check out our free Referral Doubling Strategy presentation.