admissions-funnel-analytics

Admissions Funnel Analytics Skill

Purpose: help admissions-conversion-coach read the funnel honestly, find the leak, give every decline a root cause and an owner, and connect activity to census. A referral count is never census; a converted, admitted patient is.

When to use

• Reading the funnel for a leak.
• Diagnosing a conversion drop.
• Setting up honest tracking.
• Connecting activity to a census target.

1. The funnel stages (tie each to an observable event)

Stage	The observable event	Watch
Referral	A source sends a patient for consideration	Volume, source mix
Eligibility screen	A clinical review of appropriateness	Ineligible rate (an upstream education signal)
Information visit	The informational/election conversation with patient/family	Family-declined rate (a goals-of-care signal)
Election / consent	The patient elects the benefit	Time at this stage
Admission	The patient is admitted to service	Time-to-admission, same-day rate

Conversion is measured stage-to-stage and overall (referral → admission). Stages move on events, not optimism.

2. Conversion analysis

• Overall conversion = admissions ÷ referrals. Stage conversion isolates the leak.
• Compare against a benchmark band — but treat any external number as [example — calibrate to your program]; published hospice conversion benchmarks vary widely by market and source mix.
• The leaking stage points to the owner (see the root-cause taxonomy). Run scripts/hospice_calc.py funnel for the arithmetic.

3. Declined-referral root-cause taxonomy (every decline gets a cause and an owner)

Root cause	Likely owner / fix
Ineligible (not yet hospice-appropriate)	Upstream education — hospice-eligibility-educator; also a possible late/early-timing signal
Family / patient declined	The goals-of-care conversation — goals-of-care-conversation-coach
Lost to another agency	Responsiveness / relationship — referral-account-manager, time-to-admit
Response too slow	Intake / staffing / after-hours capability
Patient died before admission	The late-referral problem — the highest-value upstream education target
Facility re-routed (relationship)	The account relationship — referral-account-manager

"We lost some" is not a diagnosis. Every decline carries a cause and an owner, and the mix tells you where to invest.

4. Time-to-admission & same-day admits

Time-to-admission is a conversion lever, not a logistics footnote: a slow response loses referrals to faster agencies and, worse, can mean the patient dies before admission. Track the elapsed referral-to-admission time, the same-day-admit rate, and after-hours/weekend admit capability.

5. Census & length of stay

• Average daily census (ADC) is the running result of admissions − discharges over time — the program's true size. Run scripts/hospice_calc.py census.
• Length of stay (LOS): average and median. A short LOS (and a high share of very-short stays) is the signature of late referrals — read it as an upstream education gap, not an intake problem. Median LOS is more honest than mean (a few long stays skew the average).

6. Activity-to-census model

Work backward from a census target: a target ADC, sustained at an average LOS, requires a steady admission rate, which (at your conversion rate and time-to-admit) requires a referral rate, which sets the activity target. This grounds activity goals in arithmetic instead of habit. The model and the math live in scripts/hospice_calc.py (census + funnel).

Hand-offs

• Top-of-funnel volume too low → referral-territory-development skill / referral-development-strategist.
• A specific partner driving declines → referral-account-planning skill / referral-account-manager.
• Eligibility-driven declines → hospice-eligibility-criteria skill / hospice-eligibility-educator.
• Family-declined declines → goals-of-care-conversations skill / goals-of-care-conversation-coach.
• Building the reporting dashboard → data-platform plugin (a reporting build, not a referral-conversion question).