News and Market Developments
Home Health Care News: UnitedHealth Group Hints at Big Home-Based Care Plans (1/20) - During UnitedHealth's 2021 year-end earnings call, the company showed few signs of a pandemic-driven slowdown and hinted at big home-based care movements on the horizon. UnitedHealth Group executives on the call explained how the health care and health insurance giant plans to progressively build out its multi-modality care platform moving forward through a combination of in-home physician and digital offerings.
HomeCare: How COVID-19 Reinforced the Important Role of Home Health Care (1/19) - As inpatient beds became scarce and people sought other options for care, home health agencies rose to the challenge, underscoring the benefits in-home care brings and highlighting the important role this industry segment will play in the future. Due to the pandemic, it’s now commonplace for nurses and caretakers to treat patients with higher acuity needs in the home with skilled treatments and services, such as home infusion therapy, physical therapy and hospital-at-home programs, allowing people to heal in the comfort of a familiar environment. The pandemic has been a catalyst for home health agencies to further adapt their service offerings with new technologies and enhanced infection prevention measures to keep patients safe at home.
NJ Business Magazine: Virtua Health Launches ‘Hospital at Home’ Program (1/19) - Marlton-based Virtua Health announced the start of its Hospital at Home program – an innovative initiative that will allow eligible patients who meet certain criteria to heal from the comfort of their home rather than a hospital room. One patient recovering from COVID-19 enrolled in the program today, which includes twice-daily visits from Virtua staff, remote monitoring, and video calls with clinicians, among other services. The Hospital at Home model offers advantages to both patients and providers, and is widely viewed by the industry as a key component of health care’s ongoing evolution.
Home Health Care News: BrightStar CEO Shelly Sun: Data Will ‘Separate Us From the Pack’ (1/18) - Non-medical home care providers know they provide significant value to their clients. The issue many have had in the past is proving that value to others, whether it be potential partners or even seniors’ families. To change that, companies have begun to invest considerable money and resources into extracting data from the work they do. The latest example is BrightStar Care, which found through an analysis that it was saving “up to” $29,902 in total cost of care on a per-patient basis. The analysis, conducted by Avalere Health, matched a group of Medicare beneficiaries with patients that had received care from BrightStar Care. The population analyzed consisted of seniors – with the average age of 80 – who had one of 30 chronic medical conditions.
Healthcare Dive: Abbott, BD, Quidel pursue DTC strategies amid 'paradigm shift' for at-home, self-testing (1/18) - The development and adoption of at-home tests that detect coronavirus infection and the integration of digital health technologies are paving the way for broader consumer use of diagnostics for other ailments that don't have to be performed at a hospital, a physician's office or a pharmacy. Abbott CEO Robert Ford said at last week's J.P. Morgan healthcare conference that the convergence of digital technology and medical technology is creating "incredible opportunities to advance healthcare, change healthcare [and] change the way it's delivered." Ford added that the company is specifically looking to "start to build a more sustainable rapid point-of-care, rapid diagnostic business not only that goes straight to the consumer, but also into other channels outside of the four walls of the hospital."
Health Payer Intelligence: How Home Health Will Evolve in the Year Ahead (1/17) - The trend of moving care from the hospital to the patient’s home began in the 1990s and has been gathering steam ever since. MyNEXUS, a manager of home-based care for health plans, identified key home care trends heading into the new year and have broken them into two categories: 1) changes in care delivery, and 2) strategic shifts to drive affordable, whole-person care.
Managed Healthcare Executive: Acute Hospital-at-Home Holds Promise for Hospitals Facing Staffing Shortages (1/15) - Acute hospital at home is a safe and cost-effective alternative to inpatient care. Organizations that engage in careful planning, establish a dedicated Hospital at Home team, define their patient selection process, and perform thorough home environment assessments can implement successful and satisfying acute care at home experiences for patients and their families.
Managed Healthcare Executive: Is Amazon Primed to Take on a Bigger Role in Healthcare in 2022? (1/14) - Amazon is poised to continue its 2022 expansion in more than just e-commerce sales. It’s about to become the largest U.S. carrier for delivery services. Yes, larger than the U.S. Postal Service, UPS and FedEx. That may sound unrelated to healthcare, but it really isn’t. That infrastructure is helping Amazon deliver their own branded PCR COVID-19 tests. It’s helping them deliver pharmaceuticals through PillPack. And it may help them become an even bigger player in the home health arena.
BusinessWire: Signify Health’s New Partnership Program Accelerates Innovation of Care In and Around the Home (1/10) - Signify Health, a leading healthcare platform that leverages advanced analytics, technology and nationwide healthcare networks to create and power value-based payment programs, announced the launch of the Signify Health Partner Program with seven inaugural partners. Through this program, Signify Health has created a partner ecosystem that connects value-based solutions focused on improving care in and around the home with hospitals, health systems, payers and patients across the country.
95.1 KJZZ: 'If you’re getting better sleep, you’re healing better': Providers expand hospital-at-home programs (1/6) - At-home programs can’t provide surgery or ICU-level care. But DispatchHealth and dozens of other providers nationwide say technology is good enough these days that X-rays, blood work and many treatments for non-life-threatening conditions can now easily be done on-the-go. And as the pandemic continues to strain the U.S. health care system, a growing number of providers in Arizona and across the country are offering patients the chance to be hospitalized at home. Patients say it’s more comfortable, and medical experts say it can improve health outcomes while lowering costs.
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