News and Market Developments
McKnights Home Care: At-Home Therapy Firm Luna to Double Workforce in 2023 (12/2) - As more health care shifts to the home, at-home physical therapy provider Luna is setting an aggressive 2023 goal to double its staff from 2,500 therapists to 5,000 across the 27 states and 50 markets it serves. Therapy at home is not a new concept. Many small mom-and-pop home therapy agencies contract with payers and home health agencies to provide physical, occupational and speech therapy at home. A 2016 study found patients who received physical therapy in their homes recovered just as well as those who were treated in outpatient clinics.
McKnights Home Care: Humana to Scrap its SeniorBridge Home Health Unit (12/2) - Humana said it is closing its SeniorBridge home division at the end of the year to focus on its Medicare Advantage plans. The company made the announcement earlier this week in a brief statement that explained Humana wanted to focus on “organizational efficiencies” that better meet the needs of its evolving business. SeniorBridge operates in nine states, offering personal home care, private duty nursing, infusion services and care management. Louisville, KY-based Humana acquired the company in 2012 to expand its care management capabilities and better meet the needs of chronically ill adults.
McKnights Home Care: Provider Group to Congress - Fix Immigration Now (12/2) - LeadingAge is calling on Congress to address immigration reform in a legislative package by the end of the year to help stabilize the aging services workforce. In a letter to congressional leaders this week, LeadingAge President and CEO Katie Smith Sloan said the long-term care workforce is in a crisis due to a shortage of direct care workers that must be addressed immediately. Home Care Association of America President Vicki Hoak says it also backs LeadingAge’s call for a special visa category designed for direct care workers.
The Hill: Support Home- and Community-Based Services Before More Veterans, and Caregivers Are Left Feeling Abandoned (11/29) - Increasing numbers of aging and disabled veterans are straining VA’s long-term care services. The rising costs of long-term care, coupled with VA’s spending caps on Home and Community-Based Services (HCBS) and home care worker shortages, are forcing veterans who prefer to receive their care at home, as well as their caregivers to make difficult sacrifices. The reality is some veterans, especially those with catastrophic disabilities, and their caregivers feel abandoned, broken, and unsupported by a system that was designed to meet their unique needs. Currently, the application for each HCBS program is lengthy, time-consuming, and disjointed. Ensuring veterans are simultaneously assessed for these programs assures efficient access to appropriate resources and improves user experience.
McKnights Home Care: Robotic Retrievers: One Possible Answer to the Caregiver Crisis (11/29) - Labrador Retriever, a California technology company, hopes to begin deploying Labrador Retrievers into the homes of seniors by the end of 2023 to help them safely age in place. These caregiver assistants aren’t canines, however, but rather robots developed by Labrador Systems to help home care firms and senior living facilities fill in caregiving gaps. A number of home care firms are using technology in various ways to help address the caregiver shortage. Artificial intelligence, for example, is being deployed to detect falls and help agencies determine the best way to provide care to seniors.
Home Health Care News: What Home-Based Care Agencies Should Know About The Independent Contractor Proposed Rule (11/28) - The independent-contractor pendulum in home-based care could be swinging back in favor of pro-union policies. Providers should take note of potential changes coming down the pike. In October, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) issued that proposed rule, which would also apply to potential employers that include registries, virtual marketplaces or consumer-directed agencies. In home care, caregivers are often obligated to follow state-required plans of care, maintain certain certificates or licenses and abide by safety protocols. Under the proposed rule, those requirements could potentially be deemed as “control,” and therefore employment.
Home Health Care News: BrightSpring Health Services No Longer Plans To Go Public (11/28) - BrightSpring Health Services – a large home- and community-based services provider – is not going through with its planned IPO. Backed by the private equity (PE) firm KKR and Walgreens Boots Alliance , the company had initially filed the paperwork for an IPO that was expected to raise close to $800 million in October of 2021. BrightSpring provides care to complex populations. Its offerings include home health, personal care, hospice, neuro rehabilitation, pediatric therapy and behavioral health services, among others. Overall, its network spans across 50 states and over 360,000 clients and patients.
Newswire: DispatchHealth Raises More Than $330 Million to Expand Its Technology-Enabled Ecosystem of High Acuity Care in the Home (11/24) - Moving Health Home board member DispatchHealth announced it has raised more than $330 million in combined equity and debt financing. Optum Ventures leads the equity financing round to further accelerate DispatchHealth's leading in-home, technology-enabled system of care. DispatchHealth's in-home, high acuity care model aligns health plans, health systems, at-risk provider groups and patients with complex care needs by delivering a value-based alternative to high-cost settings such as the emergency room, hospital ward or skilled nursing facility, reducing medical costs while improving clinical outcomes and patient and provider satisfaction. Financing will help DispatchHealth scale its hospital alternative care model, advance innovation of its technology platform, and fund strategic growth initiatives to meet the growing need of in-home high acuity care.
Business Wire: Yes Hearing Announced Expansion of Integrated Home-Based Care Services for Health Plans (11/23) - Yes Hearing, an audiology care provider, announced the expansion of their services to additional home- and community-based care services to health plan beneficiaries. Further supporting the company’s mission of enabling older adults to stay happy, healthy, and safe in their own home as they age, Yes Hearing — through an integrated and person-centered care model — will provide audiology care, fall prevention, and social needs screenings to enhance the lives of members in their preferred care setting — at home.
Stat News: Why Doesn't the U.S. Have At-Home Flu Tests? (11/22) - With so many potential viruses in play, it would be helpful if Americans had a way to distinguish between different ailments at home. And when it comes to the flu in particular, at-home testing could help telehealth doctors decide when it makes sense to prescribe treatments like Tamiflu, which need to be started within two days of onset of symptoms. Home flu testing would ensure that those who do need and receive antiviral medication for influenza are the ones who need it the most. Currently, the only test available for differentiating flu, Covid, and RSV at home is the Labcorp Pixel test, where users swab themselves at home and send the sample in for lab testing. However, this test’s turnaround time of one to two days wouldn’t be able to compete with an at-home test that gave results in 15-30 minutes.
Modern Healthcare: Health Systems Bet on Hospital-at-Home (11/22) - Health systems are increasingly investing in acute hospital-at-home technology to ease overburdened hospitals, reduce costs and improve outcomes. By equipping patients’ homes with biometric devices, along with tablets and other ways to communicate with clinicians, organizations aim to provide inpatient-level services to those who don’t need intensive care. One example includes how Moving Health Home member Current Health has piloted a program dispatching Geek Squad tech support employees to patients’ homes to assist with device setup and troubleshooting.
NVIDIA: What is a Smart Hospital? (11/22) - Smart hospitals, which utilize data and AI insights to facilitate decision-making at each stage of the patient experience, can provide medical professionals with insights that enable better and faster care. For example, video analytics can detect when a patient needs attention, such as detecting the risk of falls in the hospital or at home. Systems can also extend beyond the hospital walls to monitor at-risk patients at home.
McKnights Home Care: Providers Urge Congress to Pass Bill Stopping Home Health Rule (11/22) - Home care providers have asked Congress to include a measure in end-of-the-year omnibus legislation that would suspend implementation of the final home health rule that includes a $635 million cut to home health providers starting in 2023. The rule, which CMS issued last month, includes a four percent market-basket increase alongside a phased-in -7.85 percent behavioral adjustment related to the Patient-Driven Groupings model. The rate cut will be -3.925 percent, or $635 million, for 2023, starting on Jan. 1. Providers, who believe the rate cut is based on flawed methodology, expect the total adjustment will trigger an estimate $18 billion in payment reductions over the next decade.
Penn Today: No Place Like Home (11/21) - Patients can now receive complex care at home for a broad array of treatments that long ago or just recently were only offered in clinical settings. Penn Home Infusion Therapy can treat patients for hemophilia; provide parenteral and enteral nutrition; infuse intravenous gamma globulin to treat autoimmune diseases, and colony stimulating factors for leukemia and bone marrow transplant patients; manage pain; and administer IV fluids, antibiotics, and biologic therapies for diseases from Crohn’s disease to multiple sclerosis. Penn’s Cancer Care at Home has already been shown to cut down on trips patients need to make for clinical services and time spent in the hospital.
PR Newswire: MUSC Health Selects UpStream Healthcare as its Value-Based Partner for Medicare Patients (11/21) - The Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC Health) and UpStream Healthcare, a value-based health care company, have jointly announced their partnership to advance the health and wellbeing of Medicare patients within their expanding network across the state. The partnership aims to improve quality results for Medicare patients across South Carolina by giving them access to a team committed to improving coordination of care. Pharmacist led teams are embedded into primary care providers' practices along with nurse coordinators who perform home visits to coordinate care and ensure patients' needs are met.
Home Health Care News: Sprinter Health Continues To Capitalize Off Of In-Home, In-Person Capabilities (11/21) - Sprinter Health and Firefly Health, two companies dedicated to improving access to home-based care, are partnering to bring a new hybrid model of telehealth and at-home care to patients in the Boston area. The new partnership will aim to improve access to care by integrating Sprinter Health’s in-home clinical services into Firefly Health’s virtual primary care model. Through the partnership, Firefly patients will be able to get lab draws, vitals checks, electrocardiograms, diabetic eye exams and other services at their home.
Health Leaders: Parkview Health Expands Virtual Care Offering (11/21) - Parkview Health, an Indiana-based network announced a new program which will offer virtual care programs designed to support patient recovery and self-management at home. The program, featuring patient engagement, device-based monitoring, and telehealth tools to manage patients who are at risk of readmission, is being deployed in partnership with Veta Health, a provider of remote patient monitoring services. By leveraging remote monitoring devices and telehealth capabilities to support the care journey, the program will offer connected layers of interaction and support from care teams to optimize recovery and outcomes.
Chief Healthcare Executive: Solving the Blindspots in Transitional Care (11/20) - Starting in January, CMS plans payment cuts so substantial that the National Association for Home Care and Hospice, the leading industry group, says more than half of the country’s home health agencies will operate at a deficit. The combined impact of the proposed payment cuts and a continued shift away from the traditional Medicare fee-for-service (FFS) model is a not-so-subtle nudge for home health agencies to innovate—both clinically and financially— and to do so with urgency. This change represents a generational opportunity for forward-thinking agencies to embrace and effectively implement new models of providing in-home care.
New York Times: What if You Could Go to the Hospital … at Home? (11/19) - In November 2020, Medicare officials announced that, while the federally declared public health emergency continued, hospitals could apply for a waiver of certain reimbursement requirements — notably, for 24/7 on-site nursing care. Hospitals whose applications were approved would receive the same payment for hospital-at-home care as for in-hospital care. Uncertainty over Medicare’s future involvement hinders the approach from being adopted more widely.
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