Intake delays don’t just cause stress—they cause revenue to leak from your agency every single day. In this mini webinar, we break down how intake bottlenecks directly impact your bottom line and how agencies are using Referral AI to unlock faster revenue, reduce labor strain, and stop missed referrals.
If you’ve ever struggled to build a business case for improving intake, this is the math you need. We walk through real-world examples of agencies recovering tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue just by speeding up how they process referrals.
What you’ll learn:
✅ How to calculate the real ROI of improving intake – Time stamp: 13:47
✅ Where revenue leaks happen most—and how Referral AI stops them – Time stamp: 3:54
✅ The math behind faster intake and higher revenue – Time stamp: 5:24
✅ How intake speed affects staffing, job satisfaction, and partner trust – Time stamp: 14:41
✅ Why small teams benefit even more from Referral AI – Time stamp: 14:41
Plus, hear exactly how fast agencies are seeing results and what happens when you combine AI with smarter processes – Time stamp: 18:23
WEBINAR TRANSCRIPT
Cortney Swartwood [00:11]
Thanks so much for joining us for our fourth session in the mini webinar series. I’m Cortney Swartwood, Senior Marketing Manager here at WorldView. Today’s webinar is “The Revenue Impact of Better Intake.”
Before we get started, a few tips to help you get the most out of this session. On your screen, you’ll see the presentation, Q&A window, and a survey. You can move and resize these however you’d like.
Please use the Q&A window, not the chat, for any questions. That helps us track them. You can also ask technical questions there. The survey lets you share feedback and request information about our solutions.
There’s also a resources icon on the toolbar to download today’s slides. And, as always, this webinar is recorded. You’ll get the link tomorrow to rewatch or share it with your team.
Today’s session looks at intake from a different angle—the financial one. What does a slow intake process actually cost your agency? And what happens when you fix it? John Hickey is here to break that down. I’ll hand it over to him to introduce himself.
John Hickey [01:48]
Thanks, Cortney. I’m John Hickey, Chief Revenue Officer at ClifTech, the parent company of WorldView. We work with home-based care agencies across the country—some very large, some quite small. But the same problem shows up everywhere. Slow intake quietly kills revenue.
Cortney asked me here to explain where revenue leaks happen, how to measure them, and what the upside looks like when you fix them.
WorldView transforms intake by digitizing faxes and email referrals and automatically sorting them into the right workflows. On top of that, Referral AI extracts key data instantly. It cuts intake time from hours to minutes.
Staff no longer chase documents or manually enter details. Instead, they get clean, structured referral data that flows directly into the EMR. That boosts speed, accuracy, and capacity—without adding headcount.
The intake process is highly configurable, which means it fits even the most complex home health and hospice agencies. I’m excited to dig into this today.
Cortney Swartwood [03:38]
Awesome. Let’s jump in and talk about how intake actually ties to revenue.
John Hickey [03:54]
Instead of a ton of slides, I’ll talk through the key points. If you’re building a business case for leadership, here’s where to start: Intake is equal to revenue.
Every hour a referral sits untouched is an hour you aren’t billing. Every delayed start is a day you can’t invoice. And every slow response is an opportunity for a competitor to jump in first.
Here’s an example: A 300-census agency gets 150 referrals a month with a 50% acceptance rate, admitting 75 patients. If they improve that acceptance rate to 70%—just by responding faster—that’s 105 admits total.
Thirty extra admits, billed at $200 a day for 30 days, is $180,000 in additional monthly revenue.
So fixing intake isn’t just cost-saving. It’s a revenue engine.
Three places where revenue leaks happen every day:
Referrals sit untouched too long.
Intake staff waste time digging through referral packets—some 40 pages long.
Bad or missing documentation delays billing or causes denials.
I spoke with a nurse handling intake for six counties. On a Monday, there were 19 referrals waiting in the fax tray. They lost three before she even opened her laptop because someone else called faster.
At a large agency doing 500 referrals a month, manual intake takes about 10 minutes per referral. That’s 83 hours a month, or $3,000 in labor. And most of that is wasted on referrals that go nowhere because they were too late or not a good payer match.
Referral AI drops that to about 1 minute per referral, saving 75 hours—or around $2,700 in labor every month. But more importantly, it frees the ops team to focus on patient care.
Faster intake means faster first visits. One agency reduced intake time from 10 minutes to 1 minute and saw their acceptance rate jump from 50% to 70%. That’s 30 more admits a month—or $180,000 in additional revenue.
Speed affects everything. Faster intake means faster payer approvals, faster visits, faster billing, and earlier revenue flow—sometimes weeks earlier.
The formula is simple: Time to contact equals time to close. Whoever calls the referral first usually wins. Hospitals won’t wait while your team digs through faxes.
A Massachusetts agency with a daily census of 75 had one person doing everything. After turning on Referral AI, urgent referrals were flagged and routed instantly. That one nurse saved 3 hours a week and admitted 5 more patients a month—driving $30,000 in new revenue without hiring anyone.
If you’re wondering about the math, here it is. A large agency improving acceptance from 40% to 65% on 500 referrals gains 125 extra admits. At $200 a day for 30 days, that’s $750,000 a month in added revenue. Even capturing half of that is $4.5 million a year.
Labor savings? About 900 hours a year, or $30,000 to $40,000 in recovered FTE costs. But it’s not just about cost-saving. It’s about giving hours back to your staff so they can focus on patient care.
You don’t need more staff. You need to get better at converting the referrals you already have—and that’s where WorldView helps.
When we meet with agencies, the hardest part is putting together the business case. But it’s actually simple. Look at your current referral-to-contact time. Look at how many referrals you miss. Multiply that by your daily revenue per patient and average length of stay.
A CFO I worked with last month told the board they were losing $50,000 a month in unrealized revenue from slow intake. That got the board’s attention fast. They approved moving forward with Referral AI immediately.
If you’re looking to grow, you can either hire your way there—which just adds to the chaos—or you can fix the process. Referral AI costs a fraction of a full-time hire but delivers 5 times the output.
Bottom line: Intake speed is revenue speed. Whether you’re a small agency or a multi-state group, Referral AI gives you back time, raises your acceptance rate, and unlocks faster cash flow.
Cortney Swartwood [13:08]
That’s awesome. Thanks, John. I’m not a numbers person, but you made this crystal clear—even for me. It really shows that agencies growing successfully aren’t just improving marketing; they’re upgrading internal systems and processes.
Let’s jump into some questions. The first one: How do you actually calculate the ROI of improving intake?
John Hickey [13:47]
Great question. I look at daily revenue multiplied by missed referrals multiplied by length of stay. Add labor hours wasted on referrals you never admit. Most agencies see a 6 to 7 times ROI in one year. Some hit it in just two months.
Cortney Swartwood [14:25]
Wow. That’s impressive. Next question: We have a small intake team. Does this still matter for us?
John Hickey [14:41]
Even more so. If you only get 50 referrals a month and miss 5, that’s 10% of your revenue gone. Automating intake gets that back. Plus, it supercharges your admin’s workload, which also improves job satisfaction.
Cortney Swartwood [15:26]
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense—especially with burnout being so common. Next question: What are the financial risks of not updating how we do intake?
John Hickey [15:48]
Missed authorizations, slower visits, higher denials, and even losing referral partners if they think you’re too slow. That’s a huge risk.
Cortney Swartwood [16:10]
Absolutely. Next question: How does Referral AI and the Kno2 partnership help reduce revenue leakage?
John Hickey [16:37]
Referral AI automatically reads every incoming referral, extracts the key fields, flags urgent cases, and routes them based on your workflow. No waiting. No buried documents. Kno2 helps us pull in additional historical data when needed, filling in gaps so the intake team can move even faster with more complete information.
Cortney Swartwood [18:04]
Thanks for breaking that down. Last question: How long does it take to start seeing results?
John Hickey [18:23]
The fastest I’ve seen is under 30 days. Most agencies see results within 90 days. Once setup is done—which WorldView handles—the ROI shows up fast.
Cortney Swartwood [19:12]
That’s amazing. Thanks again, John. Thanks to everyone who joined today. If we didn’t get to your question, we’ll follow up within 24 to 48 hours. You can also email us at the address on the screen.
Please take a minute to complete the last two survey questions before you go. Hit submit when you’re done.
And don’t miss our next webinar, “The First Five Minutes: Why Intake Speed Wins,” with Jen Strachan. She’ll show how fast response times build trust, drive conversion, and improve loyalty from both patients and referral partners. See you there.
John Hickey [20:21]
Thanks, Cortney.
Cortney Swartwood [20:22]
Thanks. Bye everyone.