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News and Market Developments
Fierce Healthcare: Walgreens Doubles Down on Primary Care, Home Health with Major Investments in VillageMD, CareCentrix (10/14) - Walgreens Boots Alliance announced the rollout of Walgreens Health, a new business segment focused on consumer-centric, tech-enabled healthcare that ramps up the company’s capabilities in primary care, post-acute care and home care. As part of this new strategy, Walgreens also announced a $330 million investment in post-acute and home care company CareCentrix, which will also be operated under Walgreens Health. Walgreens Health aims to provide equitable, personalized, whole-person healthcare to local communities across America to meet where consumers they are—in the store, at home, in the doctor’s office and via mobile app.
MorningStar: Sprinter Health Collects $33 Million in Series A Financing to Join Home-Healthcare Race (10/14) - Sprinter, which formed in January, sends nurses and phlebotomists to patient homes to perform more-routine services such as blood draws and Covid-19 testing. The company, whose investors include Andreessen Horowitz, targets customers such as health systems and telehealth companies seeking to extend their services to patient homes, said co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Cameron Behar.
19th News: Protestors Push Congress for Home Care Funding (10/12) - Dozens held a 24-hour vigil, telling stories of disabled people, family members and professional caregivers as Congress considers legislation that could help make home care more accessible and provider better pay for workers. Before the vigil, ADAPTers had gone to protest outside the office of Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia. Sixteen people were arrested. Some members of Congress stopped by the vigil including Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA).
Fierce Healthcare: PopHealthCare Launches New National Medical Group, Emcara Health (10/11) - PopHealthCare, a subsidiary of GuideWell, is launching a new national medical group that aims to offer a slew of value-based care services to payers nationwide. Emcara's goal is to reduce the total cost of care by 10-20% without compromising on quality and patient experience. Emcara will serve a number of insurance segments, including Medicare Advantage, Medicaid managed care and Affordable Care Act exchange plans. Other services on its slate include short-term options like in-home assessments, social determinants of health risk assessments, transition of care services, emergency room diversion and in-home palliative care.
Home Health Care News: 'The Waiver Program is Tough': Issues with the CMS Hospital-at-Home Program (10/11) - The U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) “Acute Hospital Care At Home” waiver program has allowed more health systems and home-based care agencies to get involved. However, as it is currently constructed, it does not represent the best way forward for the concept. Participants point out that the flaw with the CMS waiver is in how patients are identified for participation and then brought into the program. This process is dependent on busy ER doctors being able to identity these patients once they have come through the ED doors causing patient acceptance into the program to be lower than non-waiver HaH programs.
Home Health Care News: At Signify Health, the Home Serves as an Anchor for Holistic Care (10/11) - Signify Health Inc. kicked off 2021 by going public. Since then, they hasn’t been shy about its mission to position the home as a major part of the care continuum. Currently, Signify has partnerships with roughly 2,500 post-acute facilities.
Home Care: How Remote Patient Monitoring Can Bolster Aging in Place (10/8) - The increased use of telehealth during the pandemic exposed some of the limitations of the technology. Vital sign readings such as blood pressure, temperature and oxygen saturation were missing from the conversation. Remote patient monitoring (RPM) fills this gap, allowing for the collection of vital signs. Despite the benefits of RPM, reimbursement is a challenge right now for home health agencies.
Hospice News: SCAN Health Plan Rolls Out Home-Based Integrated Care Model (10/7) - SCAN Health Plan, subsidiary of SCAN Group, recently launched a new integrated care delivery model focused on seniors who are home-bound or reside in assisted living and skilled nursing facilities. Members of the company’s Embrace Medicare Advantage plan are eligible to participate in the model, which integrates primary care, geriatric and palliative care medicine. Through the model, SCAN will deliver clinical care typically provided in physician offices and hospitals to patients wherever they reside.
Home Health Care News: Former CMS Chief Seema Verma: Government Programs Must Keep Pace with Home-Based Care Innovation (10/6) - One of the last CMS initiatives that Verma helped develop, of course, was the “Acute Hospital Care At Home program,” aimed at boosting hospital capacity during the public health emergency. In an interview with Home Health Care News, Verma said that “The shift to home-based care is a positive development. The advent of new technology, from telehealth to remote patient monitoring, is supporting the rapid adoption of home-based care.”
WKYC Studios: The Future of Healthcare is Taking a Nod From the Past with House Calls (10/6) - The future of healthcare is going back to the past. House calls are coming back and thanks to the pandemic, local hospitals got their programs off the ground and into people's homes. "We truly are creating an inpatient hospitalization, delivering all aspects of care to the patients at the home," said Jodi Arth, University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center systems operation manager for clinical delivery.
MedCityNews: Mount Sinai, Empire BlueCross Blueshied to Extend Access to Home-Based Care Models (10/4) - The two have entered into a new agreement through which Empire members will gain access to three new care models: Mount Sinai Emergency Triage, Treat, and Transport; Mount Sinai Community Paramedicine; and Mount Sinai Visiting Doctors Program. All three programs focus on providing in-home services to keep patients out of the hospital or serve homebound members.
Fierce Healthcare: UnityPoint Health, Henry Ford Health System expand SNF- and hospital-at-home care services with new partnerships (10/1) - The two health systems announced new tech vendor partnerships aimed at ramping up their ability to extend skilled and high-acuity care to patients’ homes. The first is a collaboration between UnityPoint at Home, a subsidiary of Des Moines, Iowa-based UnityPoint Health, and WellSky, a healthcare and community care coordination technology company. The other will see Detroit-based Henry Ford Health System build and launch hospital-at-home, SNF-at-home and palliative-care-at-home programs for its communities alongside Contessa, a provider of home recovery care services and a subsidiary of Amedisys.
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