Intake Workflow
From Referral to First Shift — Without the Case Manager Calling Someone Else While She Waits.
Intake is the top of the revenue funnel. Every referral that takes ten days instead of three days is a referral the case manager will route to a faster agency next time. CareBravo delivers intake as completed work — captured, converted, scheduled — without it depending on whoever answers the phone today.
The Model
Ten Days Becomes Three. Or You Lose the Referral.
A case manager from the local MCO calls Tuesday at 2pm with a referral. Discharge from the hospital is Friday. The patient needs care starting Monday morning. The case manager is calling three agencies because she has been burned by slow intake before, and she will go with whichever agency confirms a first shift first.
You answer because you happen to be at the desk. You take the patient information. You promise to call back tomorrow with confirmation. You write the referral on a Post-it because the spreadsheet is on your laptop and your laptop is in the car.
Wednesday gets busy. You start the authorization verification at 4pm. The Medicaid waiver portal is slow. You do not get a clean response until Thursday morning. You schedule the assessment for Friday. The caregiver match comes Friday afternoon. You confirm a first shift for Monday at 6am.
By the time you confirm Monday at 6am, the case manager has confirmed a different agency Wednesday at noon. The referral was lost on Wednesday morning. You found out Monday.
The case manager will call you again. But the next time she has three agencies on the list, you will not be the first call. You will be the third call. And the next time after that, you may not be on the list at all.
Intake is not paperwork. Intake is referral source development. And when intake takes ten days instead of three, the agency that takes three days takes the referral.
What's Delivered
A Structured End-to-End Operational Flow.
Referral captured at the moment of inbound contact.
Inbound calls, secure messages from case managers, hospital discharge notifications — all logged into the intake pipeline at the moment they arrive, with the referral source, the patient information, the urgency, and the next-step owner attached. No Post-it loses the referral.
Authorization and eligibility verification.
Medicaid eligibility, waiver authorization (CCSP, SOURCE, NOW/COMP, ICWP, EDWP, and equivalents), MCO authorization, VA service connection where applicable — all initiated automatically when the referral comes in, with the appropriate state portal or MCO system queried directly. The wait time is the wait time the system imposes, not the wait time plus the wait time before someone starts.
Initial assessment scheduled.
The RN assessment is scheduled within the window the referral source requires — usually 24 to 72 hours from referral — without it depending on a callback that does not happen because the day got busy.
Care plan development.
The assessment data feeds directly into care plan creation. The plan is documented to the standard the regulator requires and the case manager expects. No retroactive paperwork.
Caregiver matching.
Based on the care plan, the geography, the caregiver's certifications, language match where relevant, and continuity preferences. The match is offered, accepted, and scheduled — usually the same day as the assessment is completed.
First shift confirmed to the case manager.
Within the response window the case manager needs. The agency becomes the agency that responds, not the agency that promises to call back.
Documentation accumulating from Day 1.
Every step generates the documentation the eventual audit, the eventual M&A buyer, and the eventual rate negotiation will require. The intake workflow is also the documentation workflow.
At Every Stage
For the Owner You Already Are.
Tasha — pre-launch through 20 patients
Building the agency with a structured intake workflow from Day 1 means you build referral relationships on the right foundation. The case managers you build trust with in your first six months are the referral sources who carry the agency through Year 2.
Jackie — 30 to 70 patients
You know your conversion rate is lower than it should be. You do not have time to follow up systematically when you are also doing scheduling and billing. Done With You handles the intake workflow continuously — every referral captured, every step tracked, every case manager updated — so you stop losing referrals to whoever happens to be at the desk that afternoon.
Denise — 71+ patients
Your intake coordinator runs intake well but is at capacity. Done With You absorbs the volume so the coordinator focuses on the discharge planner and MCO relationships that grow the referral pipeline. Capacity returns at the top of the funnel, where census growth actually starts.
Connections
How This Connects to the Other Eight Outcomes.
- How scheduling and payroll handles the first-shift assignment →
- How the initial RN assessment originates the care plan →
- How real-time communication connects to case manager workflow →
- How compliance handles authorization and waiver documentation →
- How billing reads from the authorization data established at intake →
Questions
What Owners Ask About Intake Workflow.
Why does intake matter as a revenue function?
Because intake is the top of every other revenue conversation. Census growth depends on referrals. Referrals depend on case manager and discharge planner relationships. Those relationships depend on response speed and reliability. When intake is slow, the case manager learns that this agency is the slow one — and the next referral goes to the agency that confirmed Monday's first shift on Wednesday afternoon. Slow intake is not a paperwork problem. It is a future referrals problem, compounding every week.
How fast does CareBravo handle intake?
The structural target is the response window the referring case manager needs — usually first-shift confirmation within 48 to 72 hours of the referral, faster when the discharge timeline is tight. The actual speed depends on the state authorization system (which is outside any agency's control), but the agency-side delay — the part the agency can affect — is collapsed to hours, not days. The case manager experiences an agency that responds.
How does this handle CCSP, SOURCE, EDWP, and other Medicaid waivers?
Each waiver has its own authorization workflow, documentation requirements, and timeline. CareBravo's intake workflow runs the waiver-specific path automatically — pulling eligibility from GAMMIS or the state equivalent, initiating the authorization request through the appropriate channel, scheduling the required assessments, and generating the documentation each waiver expects. The owner does not need to remember the difference between a SOURCE assessment cadence and a NOW/COMP authorization window. The workflow remembers.
What about hospital discharge referrals specifically?
Hospital discharge referrals are the most time-sensitive intake category and the most relationship-dependent. CareBravo treats hospital discharge as a priority intake path with a documented same-day response commitment, an expedited assessment scheduling protocol, and direct case-manager communication to confirm the first shift before the patient leaves the hospital. The discharge planner who sends three referrals to CareBravo agencies in a quarter sees three first-shift confirmations come back fast — which is exactly what builds the referral relationship over the next ten quarters.
What if a referral is not a fit?
Sometimes the referral is outside the agency's geographic capacity, outside the waiver programs the agency operates in, or outside the clinical scope. CareBravo handles the no-fit response with the same speed and professionalism as the fit response — a quick, courteous decline with a referral to an appropriate alternative where possible. The case manager experiences a responsive agency either way. The professional relationship is preserved for the next referral that is a fit.
Does intake speed actually affect exit value?
Yes. The agencies that command higher multiples on exit show buyers two things at the top of the funnel: high referral volume and high conversion rate. Both come from intake speed. The 60-day rolling intake metrics — referrals received, response time, conversion rate, time-to-first-shift — are part of the Agency Value Scorecard for exactly this reason. Buyers verify intake speed in due diligence because intake speed is the leading indicator of future census growth.
Slow intake is Talent Drain (case managers stop calling), Time Drain (the owner becomes the intake coordinator), and Stability Drain (referral pipeline becomes unpredictable). The diagnostic shows you what each is currently costing.