Referral Account Planning

---
name: referral-account-planning
description: "Veteran playbook for hospice key-referral-partner work — the partner business-review structure (patient outcomes, access improvements, honest assessment, shared goals, joint plan), the account-plan template (relationship map, whitespace by unit/service line, growth plays, risks), the relationship-recovery sequence, and the partner-health read. Consulted by referral-account-manager. Patient-outcome-led; never retain or grow a partner with an un-cleared value exchange."
---

# Referral Account Planning Skill

**Purpose:** help `referral-account-manager` run reviews and build plans that retain and grow referral partners by leading with **patient and family outcomes**. The agency's referral count is never the headline.

## When to use

- Preparing a referral-partner business review.
- Building or refreshing a partner account plan.
- Recovering a relationship after a poor admission experience, or defending a partner a competitor is courting.

## 1. Partner business-review structure (the deck)

Five parts, in this order:

1. **Patient-access recap** — period, referrals received, patients served, settings. One slide, factual.
2. **Outcomes delivered** — tied to the **partner's** pressures: timely admissions (time-to-admit, same-day rate), symptom relief, avoided crisis hospitalizations / readmissions, after-hours responsiveness, family satisfaction, bereavement support. This is the heart; lead with what patients and families got.
3. **Honest assessment** — what was hard (a slow weekend admit, a communication gap), owned plainly. Credibility comes from candor.
4. **Shared goals** — the partner's objectives (reduce readmissions, improve end-of-life capability on a unit, support a specific physician's panel) and how you support them.
5. **Joint action plan** — concrete actions, **named owners, dates**, both sides. A review without a joint plan is a status meeting.

**Cadence:** quarterly for key partners; align to the partner's rhythm. Bring program-level data, never patient-identifying data.

## 2. Account-plan template

- **Partner overview & patient population** — what they are, the patient flow, the eligibility density, seasonality.
- **Relationship/decision map** — champion, clinical leadership, blockers, and _coverage_ (single-threaded = risk). Plan to widen.
- **Referral footprint vs whitespace** — which units/floors/physicians/service lines refer vs which don't yet (or refer elsewhere): ICU, oncology, CHF, palliative, a SNF's short-stay vs long-stay residents, earlier-in-the-disease referrals. Whitespace is the growth map.
- **Growth plays** — ranked, each with the patient-access value, the owner, and the trigger/timing — **all compliance-clean** (no value exchange that crosses the AKS line).
- **Risks** — competitor incursion, single-thread, a service-debt incident, a leadership change, contract/affiliation timing.

The `templates/referral-account-plan.md` is the fillable version.

## 3. Whitespace & growth (the cheap growth)

Growing referrals from an existing partner beats opening a cold one on every measure. Natural next steps: other units, other physicians in the group, other service lines, and **earlier** referrals (the biggest whitespace of all — moving a partner's average referral from "last days" to "months" serves more patients and grows volume simultaneously).

## 4. Relationship recovery (the retention moment)

A poor admission experience — a slow after-hours admit, a communication breakdown, a family complaint — handled **visibly and fast** rebuilds referrals better than a quiet good quarter. The sequence: **acknowledge fast → contain/fix → root-cause honestly → prove the fix with data → re-earn the next referral.** Run the declined-referral root-cause tree to separate a service cause from an eligibility or competitor cause.

## 5. Partner defense

Defend **before** a competitor is entrenched. Reinforce delivered outcomes (bring the review data), widen relationships, and close the specific gap the competitor exploits (responsiveness, after-hours admits, a service line) — **within compliance limits**. You never defend a partner by offering something of value that crosses the anti-kickback line; loyalty is earned with outcomes, never bought.

## 6. Partner-health read

Green/Yellow/Red on: referral-volume trend, conversion quality (are their referrals eligible and timely?), service incidents, relationship coverage (single vs multi-thread), engagement (review attendance, responsiveness), and competitor activity. A Red on any one is a retention action, not a footnote.

## Hand-offs

- The conversion / time-to-admit / decline numbers for the review → `admissions-funnel-analytics` skill / `admissions-conversion-coach`.
- New units/sources to open → `referral-territory-development` skill / `referral-development-strategist`.
- Any value exchanged to build or defend the relationship → `hospice-sales-compliance` skill / `hospice-sales-compliance-advisor` (mandatory).
- The clinical content for a partner education session → `hospice-eligibility-criteria` skill / `hospice-eligibility-educator`.