News and Market Developments
Home Health Care News: As Demand Rises For Home-Based Care, Patients Becoming More Complex (9/15) - Since the onset of COVID-19, the demand for home-based care has gone up. At the same time, patients are becoming more complex. A recent study by USAging found that 94 percent of the area agencies were still seeing an increase in the number of older adults requesting home-based care service.
Healio: Home Dialysis is Growing But More Tools Are Needed (9/14) - The United States has marched from 12 percent home dialysis utilization on the eve of 2018 to 15 percent around 4.5 years later. Increasing home dialysis services would require congressional action. It will become increasingly important for the insurers that sponsor Medicare Advantage plans to engage in this transformation; year by year, the traditional coverage and payment tools in Medicare Part B are losing their strength.
NC Health News: The Benefits of Treating Patients At Home Instead of in the Hospital (9/14) - More than 500 people have received "hospital at home" services from University of North Carolina over the past year. The research behind hospital-at-home programs has been building over the past decade or so. Studies in the U.S. have found that patients who are pretty sick, but have stable diagnoses are able to be maintained at home. They get services that are more intense than the usual home health care.
Becker's Hospital Review: Yale New Haven Health Launches At-Home Infusion Program (9/8) - Yale New Haven Health plans to launch a home infusion program Sept. 9. As part of the program, patients will receive infusion treatments at home for conditions that typically used to require a visit to a hospital or infusion clinic, including IV hydration and nutrition, antibiotics, and immune and monoclonal therapies. The health system said the program is intended to increase access to home-based care, boost patient convenience, and lower barriers and disruptions to care.
Minnesota Monthly: Advances in Telehealth Lead to More 'Hospital at Home' Programs (9/8) - In 2020, as lockdowns and the threat of COVID-19 kept more of us at home, many doctors and patients came to rely on video or phone calls in lieu of in-person visits. According to the Minnesota Medical Association (MMA), in 2019, 3 percent of patient visits used telehealth. In 2020, that rose to 28 percent. Telehealth advocates tout its cost savings, convenience, and accessibility for people with limited mobility or who live in underserved rural areas. And as demonstrated by the growing number of “Hospital at Home” programs, the benefits of telehealth aren’t limited to preventive care.
Harvard Business Review: 5 Steps to Restore Trust in U.S. Health Care (9/8) - The pandemic exposed the weaknesses in the U.S health care system and undermined public trust in it. Five steps can help restore it: support the move to value-based care, reimagine the public health infrastructure, leverage technology to improve access, shift more hospital care into the home, and cut the red tape and keep patients engaged. Specifically, Congress must act to extend the Acute Hospital Care at Home waivers issued by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). Those waivers enabled the expansion of access to safe, hospital-quality, at-home care for patients across the country during the pandemic.
JPMorgan Chase & Co: Morgan Health Announces New Investment in LetsGetChecked, Expanding Access to At-Home Health Care (9/8) - To help increase access to convenient and affordable at-home health care services, Morgan Health, the JPMorgan Chase & Co. business unit, announced a $20 million strategic investment in LetsGetChecked, a global health care solutions company that provides clinical tools to conveniently and easily manage patients’ health from home. LetsGetChecked’s vertically integrated platform supports the full spectrum of patient care, providing direct access to diagnostic testing, genetic insights, virtual consultations and medication delivery.
Skilled Nursing News: Why Nursing Home Operators Shouldn’t Fear SNF-at-Home — At Least For Now (9/8) - Skilled nursing operators shouldn’t be scared of losing market share to the shift to home trend, including SNF-at-home – at least not in the near-term. For nursing home operators, now is the time to partner with health systems and home health companies to be that in-network facility or to build out their SNF-at-home program, respectively.
Hospice News: Walmart, UnitedHealth Group Launch Value-Based Health Care Partnership (9/7) - Walmart and UnitedHealth Group will partner to offer a range of health care services to seniors enrolled in Medicare Advantage plans, including home health. Both Optum and Walmart have taken previous steps to deepen their presence in the home-based care space, including hospice.
Health Data Management: How One Organization Greatly Expanding Telehealth (9/6) – The Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) now offers about 80 telehealth services, including school telehealth, hospital-at-home acute care services and tele-mental health. Without telemedicine, patient monitoring required one-on-one care. With virtual monitoring, one employee can monitor six to eight patients at once. MUSC’s teleICU program also allows a physician to remotely monitor ICUs in rural hospitals. Leveraging artificial intelligence and predictive analytics, the physician can send alerts to patients around their status.
PYMTS: In-Person Contact Helps Fill Gaps in Telehealth Treatment and Service (9/6) - Gap closures between virtual care and the need for physical testing and data are major hurdles to the make increasing in-home care model work to their fullest extent, and they necessitate a small army of skilled clinicians to go into homes to get samples and specimens. Gap closures are a focal point now, making sure that patients are adhering to prescriptions and treatments while getting needed data and samples back to doctors for analysis.
StarTribune: Congress Should Protect Access to Home Health Care (9/5) - Throughout the pandemic, Minnesota's home health care agencies and clinicians have had to navigate a series of setbacks and challenges that have made it more difficult to meet the increased demand for in-home care. Those challenges, including rising labor and still-high fuel costs, as well as record inflation, have worsened an already notable workforce crisis within the home health community, leaving an increasing number of at-risk patients without care. There is a chance these harmful cuts could be avoided, or at least delayed, but it requires Congress to act quickly. For the sake of Minnesota's home health providers and patients alike, lawmakers in Minnesota's congressional delegation should support and help pass the Preserving Access to Home Health Act of 2022.
The New York Times: CVS Makes $8 Billion Bet on the Return of the House Call (9/5) - CVS Health plans to acquire Signify Health, which runs a network of doctors making house calls, for roughly $8 billion in a deal that cements the pharmacy chain’s move away from its retail roots. The deal, if approved by shareholders and regulators, would give CVS, which has nearly 10,000 stores nationwide, a new avenue to reach its customers: at home.
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