A home health community liaison visits hospitals, doctors' offices, rehab centers and senior living communities to earn referrals. They tell case managers and discharge planners who the agency can serve, follow each referral until care starts, and keep every gift and meal inside the agency's policy, which rests on federal anti-kickback law.
By the HireBus team · Updated · Pay data: BLS, May 2025
Median pay, home health care agencies · BLS, May 2025
We're hiring a Community Liaison to build referral relationships for our home health and home care services. You'll visit hospital case managers, discharge planners, physician offices, rehab facilities, and senior living communities, explain what we do and who we serve, and make it easy for them to send us patients we can care for.
2. Essential Duties and Responsibilities
Visit hospital case managers, discharge planners, physician offices, skilled nursing facilities, and senior living communities on a planned route.
Explain our services, service area, and the payers we accept, so referral sources send patients we can serve.
Follow up on every referral and let the referral source know when care has started.
Work with the Intake Coordinator to fix problems that slow referrals, such as missing documents or slow responses.
Track visits, contacts, and referrals in [your CRM].
Follow our rules on gifts and meals for referral sources, which are based on federal anti-kickback law.
3. Key Tasks / Daily Activities
Make [6–10] visits to hospitals, physician offices, and senior living communities.
Meet with discharge planners about patients going home this week.
Log each visit and next step in [your CRM].
Call referral sources back about referrals that didn't start, and explain why.
Check in with the Intake Coordinator on the day's referrals from your accounts.
4. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
Referrals by source: [your target].
New referral sources: [your target].
Referrals that start care: [your target].
Planned visits completed: [your target].
5. Required Qualifications and Skills
[2+] years of sales, marketing, or liaison work in home health, hospice, senior living, or another health care field.
Comfortable walking into busy hospitals and offices and asking for a few minutes.
Valid driver's license, auto insurance, and a dependable vehicle for daily travel.
Organized with a CRM, a contact list, and a follow-up schedule.
Understands HIPAA and the limits on what can be offered to referral sources.
6. Preferred Experience
Existing relationships with hospitals and physician groups in [your service area].
A clinical background, such as nursing or therapy.
Knows who qualifies for Medicare home health, including what homebound means.
Experience with [your CRM].
7. Physical Requirements
Driving much of the day, walking through hospitals and offices, and carrying materials up to [15] pounds.
Standing for meetings and staff presentations.
With or without reasonable accommodation.
8. Work Environment and Schedule
In the field across [your service area] most of the day, with office time for planning.
Regular hours: [Monday through Friday], with occasional evening community events.
Mileage for field visits: [your mileage policy].
9. Compensation and Benefits
Pay: [range and hourly or salary basis].
Additional pay: [overtime, bonus or incentive terms, or none].
Benefits: [health, dental, vision, retirement, paid time off, and when they start].
10. Company Culture and Overview
[Two or three sentences on what your company does, the area you serve, and the support a new community liaison gets in the first 90 days.]
11. How to Apply
[Apply link or email]. Our process: [phone interview, in-person interview, and next steps]. Contact [hiring contact] if you need an accommodation during the application process.
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Most field sales jobs run on lunches, gifts and commission. A home health liaison calls on people who refer Medicare and Medicaid patients, so federal and state rules shape the visit, the gifts and the pay.
Hospitals hand patients a list
Medicare requires hospitals to give each patient whose discharge plan calls for home health a list of Medicare agencies that serve the area where the patient lives. Agencies must ask to be on that list. The hospital must tell patients they are free to choose, respect their wishes when it can, and not limit their options. So the liaison's first job at each hospital is getting listed for the right counties. The next is being easy to pick. Source: 42 CFR 482.43: Hospital discharge planning (Cornell LII).
Gifts to doctors have a yearly cap
The Stark law on physician referrals lists home health as a designated health service. One exception lets an agency give a physician items or services, never cash or cash equivalents, up to a yearly total that CMS adjusts for inflation and posts online. The gift can't take referrals into account, and the doctor or office staff can't ask for it. Log every lunch and gift by physician. Staying under the cap settles only the Stark question. The Anti-Kickback Statute applies on its own. Source: 42 CFR 411.357(k): Nonmonetary compensation exception (Cornell LII).
Patients at events have limits too
Health fairs and senior living events often draw Medicare patients. Federal law sets civil penalties for offering them anything you know or should know is likely to sway their choice of agency. OIG reads the law to allow inexpensive gifts, within a per-item and yearly per-person limit it set in 2016. Cash and cash equivalents never qualify. Keep giveaways small, the same for everyone, and never tied to choosing your agency. Source: HHS OIG: Policy statement on gifts of nominal value to Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries (2016).
Some states go further
State law can be stricter than federal law. Take Florida. It can deny, revoke or suspend a home health agency's license, and must fine it, for giving remuneration to a case manager or discharge planner who refers patients to it. The rule also covers other facility staff and outside vendors involved in discharge planning at a hospital, assisted living facility or other licensed facility. Learn your state's rule before you plan the first lunch for a case management team. Source: Florida Statutes 400.474: Administrative penalties for home health agencies.
Personal care is sold to families
Referrals for private-pay personal care come from other people: senior living staff, elder law attorneys, geriatric care managers, adult children and long-term care insurers. They ask about hours, shift minimums, how caregivers are matched and who covers a call-off. Therapy results matter less to them. A liaison who covers both service lines carries two pitches and knows which one each contact needs.
How much home health community liaisons make
The closest BLS group for home health community liaisons is sales representatives of services. Sales representatives of services who work for home health care agencies earned a median of $38.18 an hour ($79,400 a year) in May 2025, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s above the $69,990 median for sales representatives of services in all industries. About 7,700 of the 1,256,010 sales representatives of services in that survey work for home health care agencies.
Liaisons are usually paid a base salary plus mileage, sometimes with a bonus. A bonus or commission tied to referrals or admissions can run into the federal Anti-Kickback Statute, so have a healthcare attorney review the plan before you offer it.
Home health care agencies
$79,400$79,400 median Middle half $68,960–$93,040 10th–90th $57,750–$106,790
All industries
$69,990$69,990 median Middle half $47,670–$100,480 10th–90th $37,980–$148,840
$25k$50k$75k$100k$125k$150k$175k
10th–90th percentileMiddle halfMedianAnnual pay, May 2025. Source: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics.
Annual pay by percentile
Group
10th
25th
Median
75th
90th
Home health care agencies
$57,750
$68,960
$79,400
$93,040
$106,790
All industries
$37,980
$47,670
$69,990
$100,480
$148,840
Skills to hire for, and what you can teach
Hire for these
Gets past a busy front desk and earns a few minutes with a case manager
Follows up on every referral and reports back, good news or bad
Turns down a referral source's request that breaks the rules and keeps the relationship
Updates the CRM the same day, visits and next steps included
Plans a route across the service area and sticks to it
Teach these on the job
Who qualifies for Medicare home health, homebound status included, explained in plain words
Your service area, payer contracts and the referrals intake can't take
Your gift and meal policy and how to log each item
Your CRM and referral reports
Each hospital's rules for agency staff visiting its floors
Your private-pay rates, shift minimums and caregiver matching process
Liaisons work from a CRM, built into the EMR or separate, such as Salesforce, plus a mileage app and printed service guides. Some also bring the agency's Medicare Care Compare star ratings, which case managers and families can look up themselves. In the interview, have candidates show how they planned and logged a week of visits.
Home health community liaison interview questions
They have their own page: 6 questions that test this job, what strong and weak answers sound like, and a work exercise to run with your finalists.
The template's four measures have blank targets. Use a few months of CRM and referral data to set a starting point for each account, then review progress with the CEO each month.
Referrals by source
Count each month's referrals per hospital, practice, facility and community contact, using the source intake records on every referral. Watch for accounts that drop off, since a drop often points to an intake or staffing problem.
New referral sources
Sources whose first referral to the agency came in this quarter, matched against the referral log. Credit a source when intake receives its referral, not when the liaison first visits.
Referrals that start care
Referrals from the liaison's accounts that reached a first visit, divided by all referrals from those accounts. Go over the ones that didn't start with intake each week, reason by reason.
Planned visits completed
Visits logged in the CRM against the route plan set at the start of each week. Read a sample of visit notes for real next steps, not just drop-ins.
Career path
Intake coordinatorLearns the referral sources and why some referrals never start.
Community LiaisonBuilds and keeps referral relationships across the service area.
Senior liaison or business development managerLeads other liaisons and owns the largest health system accounts.
Director of business developmentSets growth plans for both service lines with the CEO.
Not without a healthcare attorney's review. Under the Anti-Kickback Statute, paying anyone on purpose to bring in or reward Medicare or Medicaid referrals is a federal crime. A safe harbor covers pay to bona fide employees, though whether a referral bonus fits it is a legal question. It doesn't reach independent contractors. Their safe harbor needs a written contract of at least a year and a pay method set in advance, at fair market value, that doesn't take referrals into account. OIG's compliance guidance asks whether pay takes into account the volume or value of business generated. State laws can add limits.
How much does a home health community liaison make?
Sales representatives of services who work for home health care agencies earned a median of $38.18 an hour ($79,400 a year) in May 2025, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The middle half earned between $68,960 and $93,040 a year. Pay also depends on your local market, experience and overtime.
Should a home health liaison have a clinical background?
The template lists nursing or therapy as preferred. A nurse or therapist can read a referral, explain homebound status and answer a case manager's general questions on the spot. A liaison from senior living or hospice sales brings contacts and sales habits instead. Either way, questions about one patient's care go to the director of nursing, not the liaison.
How is a community liaison different from an intake coordinator?
The liaison works outside the office. They visit referral sources, learn what each one needs and bring referrals in. Intake works inside. They take each referral, check insurance, collect documents and hand ready cases to scheduling. The two should talk every day. When a referral stalls, intake knows why, and the liaison carries that answer back to the referral source.
How long before a new liaison brings in referrals?
Expect a ramp. Case managers want to see the agency answer fast and start care on time before they send more. In the first months, judge a new liaison on planned visits completed, new contacts and how quickly they close the loop on each referral. Referral counts follow those habits.
