Job Description

Patient Access Owner - Home Health & Hospice

Pennant is looking for a dynamic and result focused Patient Access Owner to lead the critical front-end of our operations for Home Health and Hospice services. This is a vital leadership position where you will be the ultimate owner of our referral through intake processes, ensuring speed, accuracy, and compliance from the moment a referral is received.

The Role: Precision & Pace

You will be the engine that drives patient acquisition, ensuring that every referral—regardless of source—is converted into a clean, actionable file quickly and compliantly. This role demands sharp operational focus, strong staff development, and a continuous commitment to collaboration to elevate our referral processes to industry best practice.

Key Responsibilities

• Process Ownership : Design, implement, and manage streamlined, highly effective processes for receiving and processing home health and hospice referrals from all sources, including portals, hospitals, physician offices, community partners, and internal marketing efforts.
• Data Integrity & Clean Referrals : Establish and enforce rigorous quality control standards to ensure all patient demographic, clinical, and insurance data is accurate and complete upon acceptance , eliminating errors that compromise patient care or financial health.
• Team Leadership : Lead and develop top intake staff that will in turn influence their teams to be high performers. You will define performance excellence, ensuring continuous staff education on payer requirements, clinical criteria, and system utilization to drive maximum throughput.
• Efficiency & Speed : Command intake throughput and acceptance rates, using data to identify and eliminate process friction that delays the start of care and impacts the patient experience.
• Compliance : Act as the gatekeeper, ensuring all intake procedures and documentation strictly adhere to regulatory standards, including HIPAA and payer-specific eligibility rules.

Strategic Partnership & Process Improvement

You won't work in a vacuum—you will be a proactive partner in driving growth and efficiency:

• Referral Source Collaboration : Work directly with referral sources (hospitals, physician liaisons, assisted living facilities, skilled nursing facilities) to understand their pain points, streamline electronic or manual submission processes, and ensure a seamless, positive experience for our partners.
• Marketing Team Integration : Collaborate closely with the Marketing Director and team to translate sales strategies into executable intake processes, providing real-time feedback on referral quality and process friction to continuously refine market approach and referral channel effectiveness.
• RCM Partnership : Engage strategically with Revenue Cycle Management (RCM) Directors and Clinical Operations to ensure a perfect handoff, using insights from authorizations and billing to continuously clean up the front-end process.

Qualifications

• Experience : A minimum of 5 years of progressive leadership experience managing a high-volume Intake or Admissions department within home health or hospice .
• Process Expertise : Proven success in streamlining and optimizing complex intake processes for referrals coming from diverse sources (EHR portals, fax, direct contact).
• Knowledge : Deep understanding of the documentation requirements, insurance verification, and authorization processes required to qualify referrals for home health and hospice services.
• Skills : Exceptional organizational, communication, and analytical skills, with a laser focus on metrics-driven decision-making and leading high-performing teams.
• Technology : Proficiency with major Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems and CRM tools used in post-acute care.
• Education : Bachelor's degree in Healthcare Administration, Business, or a related field.

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