A home health intake coordinator turns referrals from hospitals, doctors and families into new patients and clients. They collect orders and records, check insurance, send clinical questions to the nurse, and pass each ready case to the scheduler before the hospital calls the next agency.
By the HireBus team · Updated · Pay data: BLS, May 2025
Median pay, home health care agencies · BLS, May 2025
Annual pay: 10th percentile $40,000, middle half $45,140 to $58,260, 90th percentile $62,930. Source: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025.
Reports to
Office Manager
Department
Office
Schedule
Weekdays, with late and weekend coverage · Weekday office hours that run late for afternoon hospital discharges, plus a rotating weekend referral phone
We're hiring an Intake Coordinator to turn new referrals into admitted patients and clients. You'll take referrals from hospitals, physicians, and families, collect the documents and insurance details we need, check eligibility and authorizations, and hand complete cases to the clinical team in time for a prompt start of care.
2. Essential Duties and Responsibilities
Take referrals by phone, fax, and referral portals from hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, physician offices, senior living communities, and families.
Collect referral documents: orders, face-to-face encounter notes, history and physical, medication list, and insurance information.
Verify eligibility and benefits for Medicare, Medicare Advantage, Medicaid, and commercial plans, and check for an open home health period with another agency.
Get prior authorizations where the payer requires them, and track authorized visits or hours.
Explain private-pay rates and long-term care insurance steps to families, such as the elimination period and claim forms.
Send each referral to the Director of Nursing to confirm we can meet the patient's needs, and tell the referral source quickly if we can't.
Track referrals, admissions, and the reasons referrals didn't start.
3. Key Tasks / Daily Activities
Work the referral queue first thing and call referral sources back.
Run eligibility checks and request missing documents from hospitals and physician offices.
Create new patient and client records in [your EMR or home care software].
Hand ready cases to the Scheduler for start of care.
Follow up on referrals waiting on authorization or paperwork.
4. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
Referral response time: [your target].
Referrals admitted: [your target].
Time from referral to start of care: [your target].
Admissions with complete insurance verification: [your target].
Claims denied for eligibility or authorization: [your target].
5. Required Qualifications and Skills
High school diploma or equivalent; some college or medical office training is a plus.
[2+] years of intake, patient registration, insurance verification, or medical office experience.
Knows the differences between Medicare, Medicare Advantage, Medicaid, and commercial insurance.
Clear and courteous on the phone with discharge planners and worried families.
Handles protected health information under HIPAA.
6. Preferred Experience
Home health or hospice intake experience.
Knows Medicare home health eligibility basics, including homebound status and the face-to-face encounter.
Experience with Medicaid waiver and long-term care insurance cases.
Has used [your EMR] or hospital referral portals such as [your portal].
7. Physical Requirements
Sitting at a computer with a headset for long periods.
Occasionally carrying paper and supplies up to [15] pounds.
With or without reasonable accommodation.
8. Work Environment and Schedule
Office-based in [branch city].
Regular hours: [Monday through Friday], with coverage until [time] for late hospital discharges.
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 intake coordinator 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.
Need help filling this role? HireBus posts the ad, Iris interviews every applicant by phone before you do, and you decide who to hire. Start hiring now
Intake anywhere means forms and insurance checks. In home health, Medicare's paperwork rules and a race with other agencies decide whether a referral becomes a patient.
The face-to-face note has a window
Medicare home health needs a face-to-face visit with the patient that relates to the main reason for home care. It has to fall in the 90 days before care starts or the 30 days after. It can be done by a physician, nurse practitioner, clinical nurse specialist or physician assistant, or by a certified nurse-midwife if state law permits. A telehealth visit counts only if it meets Medicare's telehealth rules. Intake asks for that note with the referral, not after the first visit. Source: 42 CFR 424.22: Requirements for home health services (Cornell LII).
Another agency may already have the patient
Only one agency at a time can bill Medicare for a patient's home health care. So intake checks Medicare's eligibility system before each admission. A patient can still choose to switch agencies. Then CMS's billing manual says the new agency must record three things: that it checked a Medicare inquiry system, that it contacted the first agency, and that the patient was told the first agency will stop giving Medicare care and stop being paid for it. Source: CMS Medicare Claims Processing Manual, chapter 10: Home health agency billing.
Hospitals can send records for treatment
HIPAA lets a hospital or doctor's office share a patient's records with you for your care of that patient. It doesn't require a signed release from the patient for that. So once a patient is referred, the discharge planner can send the history and physical, the drug list and the orders. The hospital still sets its own rules on what it sends. Intake files what comes in the patient's chart, not in an email inbox. Source: 45 CFR 164.506: Uses and disclosures for treatment, payment, or health care operations (Cornell LII).
Families hear the costs before care starts
Medicare's patient rights rule says the agency must tell each patient, out loud and in writing, what Medicare, Medicaid or another federal program is expected to pay. It must also name the charges those programs may not cover and what the patient may owe before care starts. Those answers come from intake's benefit check. A wrong copay or a missed second plan becomes a broken promise at the first visit. Source: 42 CFR 484.50: Condition of participation, patient rights (Cornell LII).
Long-term care policies have a waiting period
Most long-term care policies pay once the person needs help with two or more of six daily activities, or has a cognitive impairment. Then an elimination period, chosen when the policy was bought and measured in days, has to pass. The family pays for care during that wait, and some policies require paid care during it. Intake asks for the policy details and claim forms on the first call. Source: Administration for Community Living: Receiving long-term care insurance benefits.
How much home health intake coordinators make
The closest BLS group for home health intake coordinators is interviewers. Interviewers who work for home health care agencies earned a median of $23.98 an hour ($49,870 a year) in May 2025, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s above the $45,920 median for interviewers in all industries. About 2,880 of the 148,060 interviewers in that survey work for home health care agencies.
Usually hourly, sometimes salaried. Say how the weekend referral phone is paid, including calls taken from home, before the first rotation starts.
Home health care agencies
$49,870$49,870 median Middle half $45,140–$58,260 10th–90th $40,000–$62,930
All industries
$45,920$45,920 median Middle half $38,330–$53,090 10th–90th $33,900–$62,810
$20k$30k$40k$50k$60k$70k
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
$40,000
$45,140
$49,870
$58,260
$62,930
All industries
$33,900
$38,330
$45,920
$53,090
$62,810
Skills to hire for, and what you can teach
Hire for these
Reads a referral packet and spots a missing order, signature or date before calling the family
Explains Medicare, Medicare Advantage, Medicaid and private-pay options to a worried family in plain words
Stays polite and firm with busy discharge planners while chasing documents
Keeps several referrals moving at once and knows the status of each
Knows where clinical judgment starts and hands those questions to the nurse
Enters names, plan numbers and dates accurately, since billing uses every field later
Teach these on the job
Your EMR's referral and admission screens
Medicare eligibility checks and how to read the response
Each Medicare Advantage and Medicaid plan's authorization steps
Your service area, staff mix and the referrals you can't take
Your private-pay rates and how to explain them to families
Intake works in the agency's EMR, for example WellSky, Axxess or Homecare Homebase, alongside eFax, hospital referral portals and an eligibility tool that checks Medicare and other plans. In the interview, hand candidates a sample eligibility response and ask what it tells them about the patient.
Home health intake coordinator 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.
Fill each blank from your own referral log. Pull the last quarter, see where intake stands by referral source, and set targets with the office manager.
Referral response time
Minutes from when a referral arrives by fax, portal or phone to the first call back to the referral source. Time-stamp every referral on arrival, after-hours ones too, and report by source.
Referrals admitted
Admissions divided by referrals received each month, split by source and payer. Log a reason for every referral that didn't start, such as no staff in that area, not eligible or family declined.
Time from referral to start of care
Days from referral to the first visit, taken from EMR dates. Report the typical case and the slowest cases, and note which step held each slow one up.
Admissions with complete insurance verification
New admissions with eligibility, any second plan and any required authorization on file before the first visit, divided by all new admissions. Audit a sample of new charts each month against a checklist.
Claims denied for eligibility or authorization
Denials coded to eligibility, coverage or a missing authorization each month, counted with billing's help. For each one, open the intake record and find the check that was skipped or wrong.
Career path
Patient registration or medical front deskLearns insurance cards, eligibility checks and privacy rules at the front desk.
Intake CoordinatorTurns referrals into admissions and keeps the referral log.
Community liaisonTakes what intake taught about stalled referrals out to hospitals and offices.
Office managerLeads a branch's front office team and its daily numbers.
Not necessarily. The template doesn't ask for a license. Many agencies use a non-clinical coordinator for the paperwork and insurance, with a nurse reviewing each referral's care needs. Here the director of nursing confirms the agency can meet the patient's needs. The coordinator gathers facts, passes clinical questions to the nurse, and never tells a family what care a patient should get.
How much does a home health intake coordinator make?
Interviewers who work for home health care agencies earned a median of $23.98 an hour ($49,870 a year) in May 2025, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The middle half earned between $45,140 and $58,260 a year. Pay also depends on your local market, experience and overtime.
What should intake do when the agency can't take a referral?
Say so quickly and give the reason, such as no therapist in that county or a plan you aren't contracted with. Then log it. A fast, honest no keeps the discharge planner calling you next time. The log also shows the office manager where staffing gaps or missing contracts cost admissions.
Should intake cover weekends?
Hospitals send patients home on Fridays and weekends, and those referrals still need an answer before Monday. A rotating weekend phone with remote access to the EMR, backed by an on-call nurse for clinical questions, keeps them from going elsewhere. Tell candidates about the rotation in the first interview, not at the offer.
What does intake collect for a personal care client?
Who is covering the cost, the hours and days the family wants, and the tasks the caregiver will do. Note what a caregiver will meet at the door, from stairs to a dog. Add the signed service agreement. If long-term care insurance will cover it, get the policy number and the insurer's claim forms. Then pass the case to the client care coordinator for the home visit.
