How Compassus Improved Referral Decision Time by 64% with Commure Orchestrator

500K+

annualized referrals processed with Orchestrator

4K+ hours

returned to Compassus intake teams each week

22%

fewer missed referrals in longest-running programs

How Compassus Improved Referral Decision Time by 64% with Commure Orchestrator

About the Organization

Compassus is a leading national provider of integrated home-based care services, including home health, palliative care, home infusion and hospice. Around 10,000 teammates and more than 300 programs across 33 states provide high-quality care and manage patients’ advanced illnesses in partnership with health systems and long-term care partners.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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TABLE OF CONTENTS 

Executive Summary

Compassus co-developed and deployed Commure Orchestrator across 79 programs in 19 states. It now processes more than 500,000 annualized referrals and has cut the time from referral ingestion to decision by 64%, roughly 12 hours saved per referral.

In home-based care, referrals often run 60 to 80 pages and arrive by fax, payer portal, and email. Working through them by hand takes heavy staffing, and slow responses carry a real cost. Responding quickly often determines whether a patient can begin care without delay. With Orchestrator, Compassus intake teams process each referral in under 10 minutes instead of about an hour. They capture more of the referrals they're sent and get patients home from the hospital sooner.

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The Transformation: Before vs. After

before
after
Referral Intake
Referrals arrived across fax, payer portals, and email, and teams toggled between as many as 15 systems to work them.
One unified interface. Fax, portal (Inovalon, UHC, Availity, Waystar), and email intake are pulled automatically into a single queue.
Decision Speed
Length of time from ingestion to accept/decline delayed care for patients ready to leave the hospital.
64% faster – About 12 hours saved on each referral, so Compassus can respond while a patient still needs their care placed.
Intake Workload
About an hour of manual review and data entry per referral, on documents running 60 to 80 pages.
Under 10 minutes per referral. Automated triage and capacity matching by geography and discipline do the heavy lifting.
Referral Capture
Referrals could slip through the cracks or were accepted outside the service area.
Fewer missed referrals. Missed referrals fell 22% in the states where Orchestrator has been placed longest.
Time to Care
Patients waited in hospital beds while intake worked through the referral packet.
6% more admissions. Faster decisions help patients get from the hospital to home sooner.
Visibility
Program-by-program tracking through spreadsheets and manual processes.
Unified reporting across programs, with the status of every referral visible in one place.

Impact by the Numbers

Faster Decisions

64%

reduction in referral decision time
Volume at Scale

7,000+

referrals processed per week
Enterprise Adoption

1,400+

users across 79 programs in 19 states
Connected Network

8,500+

referring facilities and 2,500+ insurance plans
Less Manual Work

Under 10 minutes

per-referral processing, reduced from ~1 hour
User Satisfaction

~80%

of team members report being very satisfied
ROI  SPOTLIGHT

With roughly 50 minutes saved on each of 7,000+ weekly referrals, Orchestrator returns an estimated 4,000+ intake hours to Compassus teams every week. That capacity goes back into responding faster and accepting more patients.

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“Our focus is getting patients home from the hospital and settled into care as soon as they’re ready,” said Evan Kramer, Senior Vice President of Innovation and Operational Excellence at Compassus. “Before, a patient could spend extra time in a hospital bed while our team worked through 60 or 80 pages. Now our teams can respond to our health system partners in a fraction of the time, so patients can begin receiving care at home sooner.”

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Key Success Drivers

Executive Sponsorship
Compassus's Innovation and Operational Excellence leadership owned the rollout end to end, from configuration decisions through network expansion.
Program-by-Program Rollout
Compassus refined the workflow with early programs, then expanded in planned waves across its network.
Workflow Built with Users
Intake feedback shaped the interface directly. One example is separating accept/decline decisions from writeback to Homecare Homebase.
Deep System Integration
Orchestrator writes insurance and referral data back into Compassus's systems of record. This cuts duplicate data entry for intake and business office teams.
Responsive Support
Commure acknowledges support tickets within 15 minutes, often in about 3, so issues get resolved before they slow down intake.
Collaboration and Co-Development
Ahead of go-live, Compassus and Commure spent six months designing the intake processes and building the tool together, mapping real referral workflows before a single patient referral ran through the platform.

Voices from the Frontline

  • "My census is 415 today – I have 32 new starter cares not accounted for yet. We have hit our goal three months in a row now, and I know that a lot of that has to do with Commure. I'm going to need to start hiring!" — Stephanie Watkins, Home Health Executive Director
  • "This is a game changer that you're pulling from Waystar & Availity and saving us from going to all of the different portals, we aren't bouncing between 15 different things, it's all right here." — Kitty Underwood, Director, RCM Training and Program Support
  • "We've seen in previous waves a reduction in messages and emails… it is helping speed and streamline this process, the referrals… and gives you a lot of information in one place." — Kustina Bice, Director of Business Office Solutions
  • "Commure support team acknowledges tickets within 15 minutes (often ~3 minutes), which is incredible." — Michael Thompson, VP, Operational Excellence

It's a huge lifesaver! I don't know how I can survive without it.

Anita Appoh
Provider

Skeptics say, ‘everything's going to be a canned note [with Ambient AI]’. But our note differentiation today on Commure is a million times better than it was in the EMR and way better than when we were pen and paper dictating

Dr. Robert Biernbaum
Chief Medical Officer

Wow that’s really cool to have all that information on one page and the references. This is game changing!

Eilis Byrnes
Telemedicine Provider

Our providers that have been slow to adopt Commure we notice them falling behind from E/M and LOS standpoint. A little support goes a long way to optimize Commure utilization. And once they get it, they never look back.

Martin Christensen
Medical Director Documentation & Utilization

"My census is 415 today – I have 32 new starter cares not accounted for yet. We have hit our goal three months in a row now, and I know that a lot of that has to do with Commure. I'm going to need to start hiring!"

Stephanie Watkins
Home Health Executive Director

This is a game changer that you're pulling from Waystar & Availity and saving us from going to all of the different portals, we aren't bouncing between 15 different things, it's all right here."

Kitty Underwood
RCM Training and Program Support

"We've seen in previous waves a reduction in messages and emails… it is helping speed and streamline this process, the referrals… and gives you a lot of information in one place."

Kustina Bice
Director of Business Office Solutions

"Commure support team acknowledges tickets within 15 minutes (often ~3 minutes), which is incredible."

Michael Thompson
VP, Operational Excellence