AI Playbook for Hospice Intake Coordinators
Hospice intake is broken: referrals get lost, documentation lags 48 hours, and good coordinators burn out inside two years. Here's the playbook that uses Wyse to do the triage and paperwork so the coordinator can do the family conversations.
What you ship
- Every inbound referral triaged and acknowledged within 2 hours, automatically.
- Intake paperwork (consent, election forms, medication list, POLST) drafted within 4 hours, ready for coordinator review.
- Hospice admission scheduled within 24 hours, with the right discipline (RN, MSW, chaplain) assigned by patient need.
- Daily intake report delivered to the medical director and ED at 8am with overnight referrals, fit issues, and capacity flags.
- Average coordinator caseload up by 40 percent without overtime.
The 30-day rollout
- 01
Day 1: Connect referral sources
Wire your fax line, HIPAA-secure email, EHR referral feed (PointClickCare, MatrixCare, Homecare Homebase), and hospital discharge planner emails into OpsWyse. Each referral source becomes a watched inbox. Wyse reads new referrals as they arrive.
- 02
Day 1: Configure the triage rubric
Set your eligibility checks: hospice diagnosis, life expectancy assessment, county served, payer (Medicare, Medicaid, commercial), capacity by team. Wyse runs every new referral against the rubric and flags fit, partial-fit, or out-of-criteria with reasoning.
- 03
Day 2-3: Document templates
Upload your current intake packet (Notice of Election, consent for hospice care, POLST/DNR, medication reconciliation, plan of care). Wyse learns the template structure. Going forward, Wyse pre-fills 70 to 80 percent of each form from the referral data, the EHR pull, and the coordinator's intake call notes.
- 04
Day 4-7: Auto-acknowledge and schedule
Once eligibility checks are green and capacity is open, Wyse drafts a same-day acknowledgement to the referring source, contacts the family with a scheduling text, and proposes the admission slot. Coordinator approves or edits before send. By day 7 most acknowledgements are one-click.
- 05
Week 2: Discipline routing
Wyse matches each admission to the right primary nurse, MSW, and chaplain by load, geography, and specialty (pediatric, dementia, oncology, ALS). Coordinator sees the proposed assignment and a one-line reason. Routing decisions get faster every week as Wyse learns your team.
- 06
Week 3: Daily intake dashboard
Wyse posts a daily 8am summary to your medical director and ED: overnight referrals, fit issues, capacity warnings, families still waiting on admission > 24 hours, payer issues. This replaces the morning huddle email and the spreadsheet most agencies still run manually.
- 07
Week 4: Compliance and audit
Wyse logs every step with a timestamped audit trail: who pulled the EHR record, when the family was contacted, what form was drafted, who approved it. Audit-ready by default. CHAP and ACHC surveys go from 2-week scrambles to a single PDF export.
The agents Wyse runs for this role
Reads inbound fax, email, and EHR referral feeds in real time
Runs each referral against the hospice rubric, flags fit, partial-fit, or out-of-criteria
Pre-fills consent, election, POLST, medication forms
Matches admissions to the right RN, MSW, and chaplain by load and specialty
Posts the 8am intake summary to the ED and medical director
- Time from referral to acknowledgement: target under 2 hours (industry average 8-12 hours).
- Time from referral to admission: target under 24 hours (industry average 36-48 hours).
- Coordinator caseload per FTE: target 40 percent uplift inside 60 days.
- Documentation lag: zero forms past the 48-hour CMS rule.
- Lost referrals (referred but never admitted, untracked): target zero.
Common mistakes
- Trying to automate the family call. The first family conversation is the coordinator's job. Wyse handles the paperwork around it, not the call itself.
- Skipping the audit-trail setup. Hospice surveys are unforgiving and the audit-log is what saves you at survey time.
- Routing all referrals to the same RN by default. Caseload imbalance is the #1 cause of coordinator burnout. Discipline routing fixes it on day one.
- Auto-sending the acknowledgement before coordinator approval in week 1. Build trust first, then move to autonomous in week 3 once the team sees the drafts are reliable.
- Treating the daily brief as just a report. Use it as the team huddle agenda and you cut the morning meeting from 30 minutes to 8.
Try OpsWyse with this playbook pre-configured.
Skip the setup. We pre-build the agents, the templates, and the rollout schedule for your role. You walk in on day 1 with the playbook live, not a blank workspace.
Questions
Is OpsWyse HIPAA-compliant for hospice use?
Yes. OpsWyse signs Business Associate Agreements, runs all PHI through encrypted-at-rest infrastructure, supports SSO with role-based access, and provides a full audit log. Customer data never trains public models. The exact compliance footprint is on the security page.
Does Wyse replace our EHR (PointClickCare, MatrixCare, Homecare Homebase)?
No, Wyse sits on top. The EHR is still the system of record for clinical documentation. OpsWyse handles the intake workflow that happens before the EHR record is created and the orchestration that the EHR doesn't do (triage, scheduling, routing, daily briefs).
What about state-specific eligibility variations (California vs Texas vs New York)?
The triage rubric is per-agency configurable. You set the rules for your state and counties. Wyse applies them consistently. We don't ship pre-canned state rubrics because the variation in interpretation is too high.
How long does the full rollout take?
Day-30 is the typical go-live for the full playbook. Smaller agencies (under 60 admissions per month) often hit go-live on day 14. Larger agencies with multiple branches usually run a pilot at one branch first, then roll out network-wide over 60 to 90 days.
What happens when Wyse gets a referral wrong?
Wyse flags low-confidence triage decisions for coordinator review instead of auto-routing. Confidence threshold is configurable. The audit log shows every decision Wyse made and why, so coordinators can correct edge cases and Wyse learns the correction.