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News and Market Developments
HealthFirst: Health First Hospital at Home Program Reaches 1,000 Patients – Quality Care from the Comfort of Home (6/4) - Health First’s innovative Hospital at Home program has now reached 1,000 patients as hospital leaders seek to grow the program as a permanent trend in medical care. Begun in 2021 as a way to open hospital space for COVID-19 patients, the “hospital outside of the hospital” model was operationalized by Health First before nearly any other health care system in the state of Florida. It serves patients who are sick enough to be admitted to a traditional brick and mortar hospital but stable enough to have hospital-level services administered in the comfort and familiarity of their own home.
Home Health Care News: Hospital At Home’s Popularity Among Patients Is The Best Thing Going For The Model (6/13) - Amid efforts to push back the expiration date of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) Acute Hospital Care at Home waiver, more patients are expressing their desire to participate in hospital-at-home programs. That’s according to a new survey from Vivalink, a digital health care solutions company that offers remote patient monitoring (RPM). “Hospital at home is a very fast growing and a very high interest market segment, and we’re paying a lot of attention to that market,” Vivalink CEO Jiang Li told Home Health Care News.
Modern Healthcare: Medicaid Hospital-at-Home Waiver Drives State Adoption Amid Risks (6/13) - Florida health systems are waiting for Medicaid hospital-at-home reimbursement to kick in as the state joins a growing group reimbursing for such services, though other states remain cautious about paying for a program with an uncertain future. Approximately 330 hospitals across 37 states offer at-home acute care services through a waiver the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services created during the COVID-19 pandemic for Medicare and fee-for-service Medicaid. The waiver lets hospitals provide acute-level care at home through in-person visits, telehealth and remote patient monitoring at the same reimbursement rate as a hospital stay. But the waiver expires at the end of this year, leaving the program's future in question even as support builds in Congress to extend it. Still, hospitals are lobbying more states to cover the program under Medicaid.
The Wall Street Journal: When Caring for Your Parents Comes at a Cost to Your Career (6/15) - Tens of millions of Americans are straining under the burden of two jobs: the work they’re paid to do, and the task of providing care for older family members. The double shift can come at a career cost. Caregivers who are also working full time report turning down promotions or seeking less-demanding assignments. Some switch companies, or say they’ve had to choose care duties over their careers. An estimated 29 million workers, from senior managers to retail clerks, work while also caring for an adult family member, according to research by AARP and the National Alliance for Caregiving. Six out of 10 are working full time, compared with 46% in 2009. After working 40 hours, many spend about 20 hours providing unpaid care, according to the research.
Home Health Care News: Inside The FDA’s ‘Home As A Health Care Hub’ Initiative (6/17) - In April, the U.S Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced the launch of a new initiative, Home as a Health Care Hub. The agency views the home as a key care setting that has the potential to drive health care equity forward. That’s why it is seizing the moment, and creating room for experimentation with its current initiative, which will essentially serve as an idea lab that brings together device developers, policymakers, providers and much more.
MedCity News: Why Conditions are Ripe for Enabling Care
Everywhere (6/17) - About 30 million people in the United States live in “health care deserts,” areas where the local population has limited access to health care due to a scarcity of providers, medical facilities, or long wait times for appointments. Care access is also affected by considerations including affordability, internet access and health literacy, further restricting care access. These health care deserts are most prevalent in rural areas – regions also hit with recent hospital and service line closures. Razor-thin hospital margins and clinician shortages challenge the ability to expand services, creating new opportunities for mobile technology to fill the gap.
Modern Healthcare: Mass General Brigham Union Could Shape Hospital-at-Home’s Future (6/17) - Nurses at one of the nation’s largest hospital-at-home programs have unionized, a move they hope could influence the future of in-home acute care and encourage more people working in home health care to join unions. The union vote at Boston’s Mass General Brigham comes as hospitals push aggressively to expand care outside of their walls, while a worker shortage and increased demand for health care contribute to rising labor strife among caregivers.
Home Health Care News: Mass General Brigham’s Hospital-At-Home Nurses Unionize, Home Care Segment Moves To Follow Suit (6/18) - Nurses of Mass General Brigham’s hospital-at-home program have voted to unionize, and the clinicians at the health system’s home care segment are hoping to follow suit. The efforts to unionize first started in February. On May 16, 80 of the health system’s home-at-hospital nurses voted to join the Massachusetts Nurse Association (MNA). That same month, the National Labor Relations Board certified the union to be representatives for the nurses. Currently, the union is collectively working on what issues to bring to contract negotiations.
UC Davis Health: New At-Home Monitoring Program for Patients with High Blood Pressure (6/20) - UC Davis Health has launched a new program that monitors patients with high blood pressure at home. To support this initiative, the health system is working with Best Buy Health’s care-at-home platform, Current Health. Patients will use connected devices including blood pressure cuffs and scales. Readings from the devices will be sent to the Current Health platform and also transferred to the patient’s UC Davis Health electronic medical chart. All readings sent from the patient’s home can be accessed by the UC Davis Health Connected Care Center in real time.
Andreessen Horowitz: Investing in knownwell
(6/20) - Patients fighting overweight and obesity are systematically underserved by both our primary care and specialty care delivery infrastructure. Some patients may benefit from short-term weight loss programs; but the evidence is mounting that a majority of patients with overweight and obesity need a longitudinal, evidence-based, deeply clinical, and compassionate medical home. This home might ideally live somewhere in between traditional “primary care,” and the “specialty care” (e.g., endocrinology, cardiology, nephrology) offered by most health systems across the country.It is a single place where patients can access almost everything they need to improve their metabolic health. Through a hybrid virtual and in-person care model, knownwell offers both primary care as well as longitudinal specialty care, inclusive of weight management, diabetes care, medication (and side effect) management, multi-disciplinary nutritional counseling, and behavioral health services.
Roll Call: ‘Hospital at Home’ Gains Bipartisan Support but Questions Remain (6/21) - Congress is looking to extend a Medicare program that pays hospitals to provide acute inpatient care in patients’ homes, even as questions remain about how that program impacts health outcomes and health care costs. Hospitals are seeking at least a five-year extension of the Acute Hospital Care at Home program, which was launched during the pandemic to help overstretched hospitals deal with capacity issues. The program expires Dec. 31 unless Congress acts. Hospitals have continued the program after the pandemic for patients who need hospital-level care but can be monitored from home, freeing up beds for other patients.
McKnights Home Care: Pennant Enters Management agreement with Hartford are at Home (6/21) - The Pennant Group will set up a service center in Connecticut and provide management and consulting services to Hartford HealthCare at Home, the home health and hospice affiliate of Hartford HealthCare, the Eagle, ID-based holding company announced Tuesday.
STAT News: Family Caregivers — Critical Members of the Care Team (6/24) - Roughly 48 million Americans provide daily care for adult family members and other loved ones, delivering support that largely goes unrecognized by the health care system and society at large. As the nation ages at an unprecedented rate, the medical establishment can no longer afford to take these essential family caregivers for granted.
Fortune: What to Know about Medicare and Hospital at Home Programs (6/24) - These days, when people with Medicare get to the hospital, they’re increasingly asked: Would you prefer using our hospital at home program? That can be an enticing option if you need acute care for any of 60 conditions like COPD, pneumonia, congestive heart failure and urinary tract infections but not for things requiring a brick-and-mortar medical center like surgery or an MRI. In 2019, people with Medicare had over 800,000 hospitalizations that could have qualified for hospital at home, according to the actuarial and consulting firm Milliman.
Becker’s Healthcare: Orlando Health Expands Hospital-at-Home Program (6/24): Orlando (Fla.) Health's Hospital Care at Home has served 1,000 patients in Central Florida since launching 16 months ago and now is accepting participating commercial insurances. The program launched in February 2023 and was the first in Central Florida to be approved for Medicare and Medicaid patients. To be eligible, a patient's home must be a safe environment located within the determined geographical catchment area in case emergency care is required.
McKnights Home Care: Monogram Health Brings In-Home Kidney Care to New Communities Through Partnership (6/25) - As the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services searches for new ways to promote home-based kidney care services, private players also have risen to the challenge of developing home-focused solutions to treat patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) and end-stage kidney disease (ESKD). Recently, Monogram Health, a provider of in-home care and benefit management services for patients with CKD and ESKD, expanded its reach through a partnership with Memorial Hermann Health System, a large nonprofit health system serving patients in southeastern Texas.
Hackensack Meridian Health: Hackensack Meridian Health Partners with Medically Home Group Inc. to Launch ‘Hospital From Home’ Program (6/25) - Hackensack Meridian Health, New Jersey’s largest and most comprehensive health network, is partnering with Medically Home Group Inc. (Medically Home) to launch Hospital From Home, a program that provides hospital-level care to patients from the comfort of their home. “At Hackensack Meridian Health, we are committed to providing high-quality, hospital-level care where patients are most comfortable; for some, this is in their own home,” said Robert C. Garrett, FACHE, chief executive officer of Hackensack Meridian Health. “This innovative partnership will enable us to continue making care more convenient and accessible to the patients and communities we serve.”
Business Wire: Masimo and Cleveland Clinic Collaborate to Improve Hospital Remote Care (6/27) - Masimo, a leading global provider of medical technology and hospital automation solutions, and Cleveland Clinic, a nonprofit academic medical center, announced today the launch of a new partnership centered around hospital-based remote patient monitoring (RPM), including TeleCritical Care. This will include the integration of Cleveland Clinic’s critical care (eHospital) and non-critical care (eCMU) central patient monitoring platforms with the Masimo Hospital Automation™ platform. The goal is to provide tools for clinicians that offer enhanced situational awareness and clinical decision-support for hospitalized patients, including the critically ill.
Modern Healthcare: In-Home Emergency Care Cuts Costs, but Needs More Payer Buy-In (6/27) - At-home emergency care is gaining momentum — and could cost millions less — but reimbursement challenges create an access barrier for some patients. Deploying health care in patients' homes gained traction during the COVID-19 pandemic as a way to ease overcrowding at hospitals and prevent the virus from spreading. Emergency department care at home lets patients bypass the waiting room through referrals from hospitals or primary care providers if they determine patients do not have life-threatening illnesses or injuries. While many private insurers reimburse for such care, traditional fee-for-service Medicare and Medicaid do not pay for it as a stand-alone service.
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