News and Market Developments
Carroll Times Herald: Feenstra hears challenges for local home health service (8/18) – U.S. Rep. Randy Feenstra (R-Hull) met with nurses of Carroll Area Nursing Service on Tuesday who told him they are only just getting by due to reimbursement rates and rising costs. In June, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) proposed a slate of changes to how health agency payments will be calculated in 2023, which will result in a $810 million cut to all home health agencies like Carroll Area Nursing Service. One nurse said they don’t know how they will be able to keep their doors open if the cuts take effect.
Becker's Hospital Review: CMS home health payment update 'woefully inadequate,' hospital group says (8/18) – The American Hospital Association said the CMS proposed 3.3 percent market basket update for Medicare home health agencies in 2023 is "woefully inadequate,'' especially when combined with an "unprecedented" behavioral offset. The proposed market basket update does not does not capture the unprecedented inflationary environment home health agencies — and the delivery system as a whole — are experiencing, the group said in an Aug. 26 letter to CMS Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure.
Physician's Weekly: Examining the Mental Health Needs of Adults With Self-Reported CKD (8/18) – Data indicate that patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) and comorbid mental illnesses have higher risks of death and hospitalization and a more rapid progression toward kidney failure than those with CKD but no comorbid mental illnesses. CMS has prioritized the expansion of kidney transplantation and home dialysis in patients with kidney failure. “It’s important to look at barriers to patients with CKD receiving these treatments—including mental health—so we can proactively find holistic solutions,” Adam S. Wilk, PhD says.
Home Health Care News: Androscoggin Home Health + Hospice CEO: If Margins Vanish, So Do Necessary Investments (8/17) – Androscoggin Home Healthcare + Hospice President and CEO Ken Albert was busy at the National Association for Home Care & Hospice’s (NAHC) annual Financial Management Conference last month. But just like a great deal of other home health CEOs facing a potentially devastating final payment rule for CY 2023 from CMS, Albert was carrying around a proverbial question on his shoulders: “What happens to my business if there are no longer margins?”
Cision PR Newswire: HealthIV Brings Innovative Home Infusion Therapy to Residents of Los Angeles (8/17) – HealthIV, the digital healthcare company focused on improving home health outcomes through technology, now brings its in-home infusion therapy services to the Los Angeles Metro Area. Helmed in Los Angeles by Shawn Ankari, HealthIV's Co-Founder and Business Development Director, HealthIV's new availability for Angelenos is part of the company's ongoing dedication to changing up the home healthcare space by focusing on full digital interoperability between patients, doctors, pharmacists, and home healthcare workers.
Newswire: CarepathRx and Antelope Valley Medical Center Announce Inclusive Home Infusion Partnership (8/17) – CarepathRx, a leader in pharmacy and medication management solutions, recently announced a comprehensive home infusion pharmacy partnership with Antelope Valley Medical Center, the only full-service, acute-care hospital serving northern Los Angeles County’s Antelope Valley. This multi-year agreement will expand patient access to a new Ambulatory Infusion Clinic (AIC) as well as home infusion therapies to include both acute and specialty infusion medications.
Home Health Care News: Health System Giant Lee Health Expands In-Home Care Capabilities (8/17) – One of Florida’s largest nonprofit public health systems — Lee Health — is beefing up its virtual- and at-home care capabilities. Lee Health’s virtual health program focuses on patients with congestive heart failure (CHF),chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and hypertension, as well as post cardio-thoracic surgery patients.
Engineering: The Doctor Will Sense You Now (8/17) – Most dialysis in the U.S. today takes place in clinics or private treatment centers, but there’s a better setting: in the home. Not only is at-home dialysis more comfortable for many patients, it’s also cheaper for taxpayers—enough so that in 2019, President Trump launched the Advancing American Kidney Health initiative, one goal of which is to boost the number of at-home dialysis patients by 2025.
healthleaders: Health First Sees Success With Hospital At Home Program (8/17) – Health First is seeing great success with its Hospital at Home program, launched during the pandemic with a waiver from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and officials at the Florida-based integrated delivery network say they'll be using remote care management strategies long after the COVID-19 crisis ends.
Axios: Congress isn’t done with messy health care fights (8/17) – The Inflation Reduction Act is law. But that doesn't mean major health care interests are done testing their lobbying clout. Many are already lining up for year-end relief from Medicare payment cuts, regulatory changes and inflation woes. National Association for Home Care and Hospice President Bill Dombi said over half of the home health agencies will run deficits if lawmakers don't act. "When you have that many providers in the red, you can foresee there will be negative consequences. They're already rejecting 20 to 30% of referrals for admissions to care, so it will be affecting patients," said Dombi.
Chief Healthcare Executive: Joseph Cacchione plans to take Jefferson Health ‘to a new level’ (8/17) – The incoming president and CEO of Jefferson Health, Cacchione talked with Chief Healthcare Executive about creating a better work environment, the changing role of hospitals, and what he has learned from the COVID-19 pandemic. Cacchione says he sees Jefferson doing more with remote patient monitoring as fewer people are treated in the hospital setting. He also says hospital-at-home programs will be part of the mix, although he says there are unanswered questions about delivering acute care at home.
Cision PR Newswire: Heal Reduces Hospitalizations and Medicare Costs as Part of CMS' Independence at Home Demonstration (8/16) – The most recent results of the IAH demonstration show that Heal's in-home primary care services led to fewer hospital readmissions within 30 days of the initial in-patient stay, and fewer hospital admissions and emergency department visits for potentially avoidable medical problems related to various conditions. "These results provide further evidence of the important role of in-home primary care in improving health outcomes and keeping the sickest and most vulnerable patients out of hospitals and emergency rooms - the major drivers of health care costs," said Justin Zaghi, M.D., Chief Medical Officer of Heal.
Digital Health: Is hospital-at-home running out of time? (8/16) – The hospital-at-home program at UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester, Massachusetts is thriving. But it could be running out of time. The health system relies on a care at home platform from Current Health, a Boston-based digital health startup, to treat acute-care patients within their home. The feedback to the program has been remarkable, Justin T. Precourt chief nursing officer at UMass Memorial, said, particularly from patients and providers. Importantly, it has helped the hospital deal with the physical constraints it faces with limited beds, he said. But that could all go away when the public health emergency ends.
MedTechDive: Outset lands VA contract for portable hemodialysis system in ‘modest’ boost for sales (8/16) – The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services last year made the portable hemodialysis system the first device to receive an add-on payment under end-stage renal disease after Outset convinced it Tablo is a “substantial clinical improvement” over a rival technology sold by a Fresenius Medical Care subsidiary. Still, 2022 brought challenges for the company, with Outset temporarily pausing shipments of Tablo for home use over a regulatory issue.
Becker's Hospital Review: Why the Rise of In-Home Care Couldn't Come at a Better Time (8/16) – Health systems and hospitals are at a crucial crossroads when it comes to financial challenges and delivery of care. At the nexus of these two trends lies a major opportunity. In an increasingly polarized world, in-home care is stunningly popular. In a recent national survey, a majority of consumers said the federal government should prioritize increasing access to clinical care in the home, an answer that stood out as the only one to receive a high percentage of bipartisan support.
Healthcare IT Today: Home-Based Care for the Baby Boom is at Risk – But Operating Changes Can Shore up the Industry’s Economic Model (8/16) – In the coming decade, all 76M baby boomers will join the elderly population. And, naturally, such a significant generation will demand significant care as they age—with a resounding preference for support in the comfort of their own homes. Indeed, 90% of adults 65+ say they would prefer to age in place. But will high-quality in-home care be an option?
Fierce Healthcare: Home health providers decry 'disheartening' proposed 4% cut for 2023 (8/16) – Several home health providers are imploring the Biden administration to reverse a more than 4% cut to home health payments, saying it could blunt investment interest in the market. The proposed payment cut comes as the healthcare industry wants to expand efforts to shift care to the home setting. The pandemic greatly expanded the use of telehealth thanks to new flexibilities for reimbursement, including for hospital at home programs that employ remote monitoring.
Home Health Care News: MA Home Care Referrals Skyrocketing, healthAlign Data Reveals (8/16) – The convener platform healthAlign has a front-row seat to see how home care is being utilized in Medicare Advantage (MA). Medicaid was originally healthAlign’s focus, but that eventually changed with the amendments made to MA. The company works more with personal home care providers, but is just getting into home health care as well, Andy Friedell the company’s founder and CEO, told HHCN.
healthleaders: New Research Sheds Light On Homebound Seniors' Healthcare Utilization And Spending (8/15) – Homebound seniors are more frequent users of hospital-based care and have higher Medicare spending than non-homebound seniors, a new research article says. Home-based primary care would likely benefit homebound seniors. The study's co-authors wrote “… we found the homebound have a negligible increase in the probability of having a home health visit compared to the non-homebound, suggesting that the gap in outpatient care is not being addressed by a home-based care model within Medicare….”
Home Health Care News: Homebound Seniors Remain Disproportionately Costly For Medicare (8/15) – Homebound seniors contribute to higher overall Medicare spending compared to their non-homebound counterparts, according to a recent study from researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. The study examined National Health and Aging Trends data and Medicare fee-for-service claims data to give an overview of health care utilization and spending among homebound seniors.
Becker's Health IT: Mount Sinai study finds unmet demand for home-based care (8/12) – Home-based care models are a better and more efficient allocation of healthcare dollars as demand for home-based healthcare programs soar, according to a study published Aug. 10 in the Journal of General Internal Medicine. Researchers suggest that home-based care models are important for health systems to engage in as it targets a critically important population for quality improvement and reductions in Medicare spending.
Creamer Media's Engineering News: Hospital-level care can be delivered at home, says Discovery Health (8/12) – Hospital-level care can be delivered safely and meticulously in the comfort of a patient’s home, and many events requiring hospital-level care can be managed as effectively in the home setting as in a hospital when enabled by cutting-edge remote monitoring technology, says Discovery Health CEO Dr Ryan Noach.
MedCity News: Patients will bear the steepest consequences of proposed cuts to home health (8/11) – There are some care sectors where a reduction in federal funding is simply not feasible or sensible. Leading that list is home healthcare, a sector that has experienced significant growth during and following the peak of Covid-19 and continues to innovate for the benefit of its patients. Despite this, the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) recently proposed a permanent 7.69% cut to Medicare home health providers. Not only do these cuts significantly restrict the opportunity for delivering quality home healthcare American seniors deserve, but it also directly contradicts trends in home health and consumer preferences today.
Home Health Care News: Startup Unicorn Biofourmis Secures An Extra $20M From Intel Capital (8/10) – Just four months after raising $300 million – and reaching unicorn status in the process – Biofourmis has secured another $20 million in funding. In addition to Intel Capital’s involvement, this funding is especially notable at a time when there’s been a dip in digital health investment. “Biofourmis is laser-focused on delivering real-time patient insight to clinicians to improve the home-based care experience,” Mark Rostick, vice president and senior managing director at Intel Capital, said in a press statement.
The Washington Post: Dialysis Spending Is Out of Control. Here’s How to Rein It In. (8/10) – Audits from the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services’ Office of Inspector General (HHS-OIG) can often catch home health agencies by surprise. And after a slower audit period during the COVID-19 pandemic, experts told Home Health Care News that providers should expect a ramp-up in audits over the next year.
Home Health Care News: A Top Performer Of The ‘Independence at Home’ Demonstration Explains Its ‘Secret Sauce’ For Success (8/05) – The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’s (CMS) Independence at Home demonstration aims to find out if delivering comprehensive, home-based primary care can lead to positive outcomes and lowered costs. Broadly, the Independence at Home demonstration allows Medicare beneficiaries who have multiple chronic conditions to receive primary care services at home. The participating primary care practices that are able to meet CMS’ quality measures and generate Medicare savings are eligible to receive incentive payments.
The Hill: Four years later, Medicare policy is still failing home infusion therapy patients (8/05) – Over the last several years, the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated trends that encourage the utilization of home-based health care. However, almost four years into the creation of a new Medicare benefit designed to promote access to home infusion, this vital health program is failing to keep up with the needs of America’s seniors. The problem lies with CMS’s unnecessary requirement that a skilled professional (such as a nurse) be physically present in the patient’s home on the day of administration for Medicare reimbursement to occur.
mHealth Intelligence: 18 Health Systems Collaborate to Develop Hospital-at-Home Tools (8/04) – Eighteen health systems participated in the first phase of the Home Hospital Early Adopters Accelerator, a program created by Adriadne Labs in collaboration with CaroNova to help providers develop home hospital tools. Together, they created a set of 20 tools to support home hospital programs, including criteria for identifying patients who are eligible for home hospital services and workflows for admissions, IV medications, and potential escalation of care. The health systems will use these tools to build or expand their hospital-at-home programs.
Fierce Healthcare: MedArrive teams up with Brave Health to integrate virtual mental health into home care visits (8/04) – Two digital health startups have teamed up to make it easier for Medicaid patients to get access to much-needed behavioral health services from their homes. Home-based healthcare technology company MedArrive is teaming up with Brave Health, a virtual-first behavioral health provider, to refer its customers who need behavioral health services to Brave.
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