News and Market Developments
Fierce Healthcare: Clover Health, MedArrive Partner to Offer Home COVID Vaccinations to Members (9/16) - Clover's membership is focused in the senior market, both in Medicare Advantage and through care coordination services in traditional Medicare. As such, a number of its members are homebound and may struggle to get vaccinated, despite their high risk for complications related to the virus. These patients will now be able to get the COVID vaccine in their homes. The effort will kick off in New Jersey.
Valdosta Daily Times: Northwell Health and Walgreens Announce Strategic Agreement (9/16) - As part of the digital agreement, Northwell telehealth providers are now accessible on the Walgreens Find Care platform across the state of New York, expanding community member access to virtual emergency care services from board-certified emergency medicine physicians in the comfort of their home. Pediatric specialists are also available.
Harvard Business Review: How U.S. Employers Can Help Provide Better Health Care (9/15) - Large employers (those with more than 5,000 employees) have an opportunity to learn from their pandemic experiences to change how they pay for and manage the health of their populations. Originally developed for the elderly and Medicare population, home-based care — including house calls with lab draws and ER- and hospital-level care — has been expanded to working adults as well. Self-insured large employers should cover programs like this that have been proven to be cost-effective.
Fierce Healthcare: CareFirst Unveils New Virtual Primary Care Practice, CloseKnit (9/15) - CloseKnit will offer a slew of healthcare services in a virtual-first delivery model, including preventive care, urgent care, behavioral health care, care coordination and insurance navigation. Services are available through an app and are built to be affordable and transparently priced. In-person care is provided through referrals to local providers.
Newswise: Patients in Phoenix Area Now Can Benefit from Mayo Clinic's Advanced Care at Home Model of Care (9/15) - Mayo Clinic has expanded its advanced care at home model of care, which provides comprehensive care to patients in the comfort of their own homes, to Mayo Clinic in Arizona. Beginning this week, many patients in the Phoenix and Scottsdale area who otherwise would need to be hospitalized will be able to receive in-person and virtual care through Mayo Clinic's advanced care at home platform. Video coverage of the program can be found here.
Yahoo Finance: VeeMed Announces Plan to Change Name to VeeOne Health (9/15) - The name change follows the company’s evolution into providing a single telehealth platform to serve all the needs of healthcare systems across the entire continuum of care. This complete spectrum of care includes technology solutions for inpatient, outpatient clinical setting, remote patient monitoring (RPM), and hospital at home. It also provides operational support for customer service, credentialing, billing, and revenue cycle management.
Home Health Care News: 24 Hour Home Care Buys Non-Medical Division of Home Health 'Bundling Expert' GrandCare (9/15) - 24 Hour Home Care bought the non-medical caregiving division of GrandCare Health Services. Financial terms of the acquisition, effective Sept. 1, were not disclosed. GrandCare Health Services provides in-home medical care across Southern California with the bulk of their business historically being in skilled home health care, with a particular focus on orthopedic rehabilitation. Los Angeles-based 24 Hour Home Care exclusively provides non-medical home care services across its markets.
Home Health Care News: Older Americans Overwhelmingly Support Choose Home Care Act (9/14) - The Partnership for Quality Home Healthcare (PQHH) and the National Association for Home Care & Hospice (NAHC) highlighted the support for Choose Home Tuesday by sharing results of a new public opinion poll representing a national sample of 2,200 adults. Over nine in 10 of the Medicare beneficiaries who took part in the poll said they would prefer to receive post-hospital short-term health care at home. Just 3% said they would prefer post-hospital nursing home care.
Healio: Partnership Between HHS, ASN Has Power to 'Dramatically Change' Kidney Care (9/10) - KidneyX, a public-private partnership forged by HHS and the American Society of Nephrology, is uniquely poised to spur change in kidney care. These changes aim to encourage dialysis providers to decrease disparities in rates of home dialysis and kidney transplants among ESRD patients with lower socioeconomic status, making this the first model to directly address health equity.
Pharmacy Practice News: Hospital-at-Home Gains Traction (9/9) - Although multiple clinical benefits are ascribed to hospital-at-home care—including avoidance of hospital-acquired infections—challenges also exist. Donald Mashni, PharmD, the system director of the Mount Sinai Specialty Pharmacy, in New York City, outlined some pharmacy-specific issues that need to be addressed: labeling, documentation, storage and refrigeration, and patients' home medications.
Milbank Memorial Fund: Shift Toward Home-Based Care is Underway in Connecticut's Long-Term Services and Supports Program (9/7) - In a new article, Martha Hostetter and Sarah Klein describe how Connecticut leaders are using local data, a statewide strategic rebalancing plan, and a range of complementary programs — including a supportive housing program — to meet the needs of different types of residents who require help to live in the community. The authors also highlight lessons from Connecticut’s rebalancing efforts.
Home Health Care News: Humana Executive: Data, Analytics Key to a Home-Focused Health Care System (9/7) - Home health operators have been advocating for more care to be delivered in the home for years. Those calls have now come to fruition. In actuality, other health care stakeholders have sought to shift more care into the home as well, but operational hurdles and unavoidable gaps in care made that mission seemingly impossible. But now the home health industry is ready, Heather Cox, the chief digital health and analytics officer at Humana Inc. (NYSE: HUM), argued in a recent Boston Globe op-ed.
|