News and Market Developments
Businesswire: Hemodialysis Technology Company Diality Joins Innovative Kidney Care Campaign, Seeks to Improve Choice for Kidney Patients (6/29) - Diality, Inc. has announced that it has joined the Innovative Kidney Care (IKC) campaign, an initiative driven by a collaborative group of industry representatives and patient and provider advocates allied to remove barriers to choice for kidney patients and to increase access to home dialysis. “Evidence suggests that home dialysis can improve patient outcomes and quality of life” said Osman Khawar, MD, CEO of Diality. The IKC campaign is designed to encourage the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to improve access to home dialysis, which will require fundamental changes to provider certification and payment models for home treatment, including home hemodialysis,” added Khawar.
Businesswire: Tomorrow Health Raises $60 Million Series B to Scale Quality Home-Based Care (6/29) - Tomorrow Health, a home-based care company, closed a $60 million Series B round, bringing its total funding to date to $92.5 million. Tomorrow Health addresses the challenges of home-based care with a technology solution that seamlessly connects all necessary parties to make quality home-based care a reality. “At Tomorrow Health, we endeavor to restore the home as the patient's primary place of care by seamlessly coordinating the resources they need to heal at home.” said Vijay Kedar, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Tomorrow Health.
Home Health Care News: New Oncology, Primary Care Models Could Offer Risk-Based Avenues for Home-Based Care Providers (6/28) - The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) are taking steps to improve oncology care and primary care this week. While both are not directly related to home-based care, the federal government pushing this agenda should pique providers’ interest. From a home-based care perspective, the in-home cancer care enabler Reimagine recently raised $25 million in funding. Reimagine has also said repeatedly it plans to work with home-based care providers. Signify Health (NYSE: SGFY) also teamed up with the Children’s Oncology Group last year to provide cancer care in the home. The EOM could potentially give home-based care providers an alternate route to enter into risk-based care models.
State of Reform: Q&A: Regence’s Vince Porter on home-based care and how end of PHE could affect service-related waivers (6/28)
- Regence Health Policy Center Director Vince Porter discusses the benefits of home-based care services and what the upcoming end of the public health emergency (PHE) could mean for Regence and other organizations in this Q&A. “We envision our members will have the ability to access the right care in the right place at the right time, and the new care models delivering care to the home will be essential to meet this expectation. Any at-home model must be affordable and deliver the same, if not better, health outcomes but we believe there is already evidence that the best models deliver on both.”
Health Affairs: What We Learned From The Acute Hospital Care At Home Waiver—And What We Still Don’t Know (6/27)
- In November 2020, in response to COVID-19 pandemic-related hospital capacity concerns, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) promulgated the Acute Hospital Care at Home waiver (the waiver). HaH, built on a strong evidence base developed over decades, offers great potential to achieve the quadruple aim for health care at scale and spearhead a reimagined full-fledged home and community-based health care ecosystem. It can also help in the near term and during future strains in hospital capacity.
HealthCare Dive: Overcoming psychosocial barriers for long-term success on home dialysis (6/27) - Just 13 percent of people who currently dialyze in the U.S. utilize a home treatment option. For many, fear plays a strong defense against the possibilities of treatment at home. Home dialysis is widely encouraged due to the potential for patient autonomy, clinical and lifestyle benefits. Treatments at home also enable more flexible and personalized care, which positively impacts patient outcomes and symptom burden. While growing home dialysis programs and encouraging more eligible patients to choose home modalities is crucial to the work I do, my ultimate mission is clear—Davita Kidney Care aims to optimize the home experience for patients in a way that ensures their care plan is successful over the long term, and for their dialysis treatments to coincide with their life goals.
Healio News: Racial disparities strongest among young adults on home dialysis, transplant recipients (6/24) - Racial and ethnic disparities in kidney replacement therapies were most pronounced among patients aged 22 to 44 years who are either transplant recipients or on home dialysis, according to data in the American Journal of Kidney Diseases. “Research has shown wide racial and ethnic disparities in use of kidney transplant and home dialysis, yet how age interacts with these disparities is unknown,” Adam S. Wilk, PhD, and colleagues wrote.
Patient Engagement HIT: Home-Based Primary Care Benefits Congregate Living Patients (6/23) - Healthcare experts can add lower hospitalization rates to the list of home-based primary care benefits, with new research showing that home healthcare can be particularly good for congregate living patients with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). The data, published in the Journal of the American Medical Directors Association, showed a statistically significant lower hospital utilization rate for folks who had access to home-based primary care.
The Hill: Senate must use reconciliation to bring down drug costs, invest in home care (6/23) - The lack of access to affordable home care and prescription medications creates a difficult burden for workers who are also trying to meet family caregiving needs. With a national average wage of less than $60,000 per year, everyday working Americans are faced with impossible choices like staying in their jobs to pay for necessary prescription medications or staying home to provide the care that their loved ones need but can’t afford. This decision forces many out of the workforce and worsens the economic outlook for their own future. Through a legislative mechanism called budget reconciliation, with 50 votes, the Senate can enact vital investments of federal funding in the public interest.
mHealth Intelligence: KY Health System to Implement Hospital-at-Home Program (6/22) - To expand access to hospital services, Appalachian Regional Healthcare (ARH) plans to implement a home hospital program that uses Biofourmis' technology to deliver quality acute hospital-level care in patients' homes. ARH is a rural, non-profit healthcare system that includes 14 hospitals in Kentucky and West Virginia. Rural communities traditionally have not had access to adequate care, a trend that worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic. To combat this, ARH is creating a home hospital program that allows caregivers to provide hospital-level care to patients as they remain in their homes.
Cision PR Newswire: VillageMD Expands Village Medical at Home and Welcomes Grace at Home
(6/22) - VillageMD announced today that Grace at Home has joined its Village Medical brand, further extending its in-home primary care services in Indiana. Grace at Home, a leading provider of home-based primary care services in the state, was founded by Tammy Browning, PA-C, in 2009 and has grown to a group of primary care physicians, nurse practitioners and physician assistants. "Grace at Home aligns with our Village Medical at Home model, where we provide better care and build trusting relationships by offering high-quality care for complex patients in their homes," said Tom Cornwell, M.D., national medical director of Village Medical at Home and a primary care physician with 25 years of experience in home-based primary care.
Home Health Care News: Home Health Stakeholders Weigh In on Industry ‘Tailspin’ Following Proposed Payment Rule (6/22) - The U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released a fairly negative proposed payment rule for the home health industry on Friday. Specifically, the proposal includes a 4.2% decrease to payment rates that, if finalized, dumps cold water on an industry that’s just starting to heat up again. “The entire home health community is in a bit of a tailspin, given the release of the rule,” Joanne Cunningham, the CEO of the Partnership for Quality Home Healthcare, told Home Health Care News. Looking ahead, home health stakeholders will be busy attempting to educate congressional policymakers and the Biden administration about the impact the proposal could have on access to care services
HIT Consultant: New Hospital-At-Home Study Focuses on Rural Health Deserts (6/21) - The Rural Home Hospital program—a joint venture between the Harvard T. J. Chan School of Public Health and Brigham and Women’s–will apply lessons learned from earlier initiatives to build, launch and evaluate a program that serves the unique care needs of rural residents across the U.S. “Home hospital is a care model that has seen encouragingly positive outcomes and satisfied patients, and we believe it could make a true difference in rural Appalachia,” said Maria B. Braman, MD, MBA, ARH vice president, medical affairs and chief medical officer. Rural Home Hospital enables caregivers to deliver hospital-level care in patients’ homes across a range of acute conditions instead of admitting them to a medical facility. Shifting acute care to the home allows hospitals to optimize capacity, higher patient satisfaction, lower readmission rates and fewer hospital-acquired conditions, as well as a reduction in the overall cost of care.
Home Health Care News: At-Home Care Company MedArrive Expanding Geographically, Clinically (6/21) - In November, MedArrive had a significant jumping-off point established. The New York-based MedArrive is an at-home care provider and coordinator. It works with health systems and health plans to enable at-home care, leveraging non-traditional workers on the way, such as emergency medical services (EMS) professionals. The company’s goal is to build on use cases, like its vaccination program with Health Net, and also on its active partnerships. That includes the one it has with the data-science company Spect to bring retinal screening solutions into the home.
RevCycle Intelligence: CMS Proposes New Medicare Payment Adjustment for Home Health (6/21) - CMS is looking to apply a permanent prospective payment adjustment to the home health 30-day period payment rate to account for changes resulting from the implementation of the Patient-Driven Groupings Model (PDGM). This change and other policies in the new Home Health Prospective Payment System Rate Update proposed rule would decrease Medicare payment to home health agencies by $810 million next year. The new Medicare payment model is meant to better align home health reimbursement with patient care needs, especially for clinically complex beneficiaries who require more intensive skilled nursing care. The new method of reimbursing home health agencies would result in a 7.69 percent decrease in the 30-day payment rate in the calendar year (CY) 2023, which would total $1.33 billion.
Cision PR Newswire: Appalachian Regional Healthcare Selects Biofourmis Tech for Home Hospital Programs, Including Rural Healthcare Study (6/21) - Biofourmis, a global leader in virtual care and digital medicine, today announced that Appalachian Regional Healthcare (ARH), based in Lexington, Ky., will be using Biofourmis' technology to support a new program delivering acute hospital-level care inside patients' homes, including a clinical trial studying this care model in rural areas. "Home hospital is a care model that has seen encouragingly positive outcomes and satisfied patients, and we believe it could make a true difference in rural Appalachia," said Maria B. Braman, MD, MBA, ARH vice president, medical affairs and chief medical officer. "Biofourmis' technology, which has been demonstrated to improve outcomes and decrease costs, has been successfully deployed in urban and rural home hospital programs. The solution will give us the digital health and remote clinical support we need to help make our program a success so that we can eventually expand to more hospitals and patients."
BusinessWire: New Study Shows Individuals with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Significantly Benefit from Home-Based Primary Care (6/21) - BrightSpring Health Services, a leading provider of complementary home and community-based pharmacy and health services for complex populations in need of specialized and/or chronic care, today announced publication of a new study in the Journal of the American Medical Directors Association authored by Dr. William Mills, BrightSpring Health Services Senior Vice President of Medical Affairs, analyzing the effects of home-based primary care (HBPC) versus traditional primary care among individuals with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (IDD). The study, “Provision of Home-Based Primary Care to Individuals with Intellectual and/or Developmental Disability,” determined that providing IDD patients with HBPC, through which patients receive more regular primary care medical visits in the home and have access to around-the-clock care as needed, was associated with a lower hospitalization rate than patients receiving traditional off-site primary care approximately every 12 weeks. The study builds upon previous BrightSpring studies exploring the benefit of value-based outcomes for individuals with IDD.
Home Health Care News: How Home Health Providers Are Training Staff to Improve Patient Survey Scores (6/20) - The Home Health Value-Based Purchasing (HHVBP) Model, for example, will be implemented on Jan. 1 of 2023. The ultimate goal, of course, is for the home health division to continue to provide the best possible care for its patients under HHVBP. “That needs to really be our focus,” Cheryl Foster, director of home health at North Kansas City Hospital, told Home Health Care News. “We’re going to look at the different things that roll into value-based purchasing, but the reason we’re looking at them is because we want to provide better care for our patients and better outcomes.”
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