|
News and Market Developments
Beckers Hospital Review: Tennessee Health System Expands Hospital-at-Home (HAH) program (8/31) – Covenant Health has expanded its hospital-at-home program, Covenant Health Advanced Care at Home, to two medical centers in the past five months allowing 20-30 percent of patients receiving hospital care to now access it virtually. Their program combines in-home hospital services, virtual care, and remote monitoring while also providing a range of services like medication management, laboratory services, IV treatments, rehabilitation therapies, and diagnostic tests.
Fierce Healthcare: Humana Launches In-Home Primary Care Through CenterWell (8/30) - Humana announced that its senior-focused primary care business, CenterWell will offer in-home primary care to seniors who receive care at select locations in Georgia and Louisiana. The new Primary Care Anywhere program harnesses the capabilities of Heal, which Humana acquired earlier this year. Patients will be able to receive a number of services traditionally performed in the doctors' office, such as blood draws, vaccinations and prescription management, in the more convenient home setting.
McKnights Home Care: Hospital-at-Home Faces Uncertain Regulatory Future, but Market Continues to Expand (8/29) – Despite the looming uncertainty of a permanent HAH program, there is growing interest in providing more in-home acute care. On August 25, home care company Resilient Healthcare partnered with Community Hospital Consulting to extend HAH offerings to residents of 40 states. Pointing to widening health disparities, the companies are putting a particular emphasis on residents of rural areas, who disproportionately experience limited access to health care.
Home Health Care News: Aware Recovery Care Is Bringing Substance Use Disorder Treatment To The Home (8/28) - Aware Recovery Care is offering addiction treatment services in the home. The company's program is an innovative longitudinal in-home care model that treats a disease as a chronic disease, and approaches that from the standpoint of providing whole-person care over an extended period of time. Currently, the company has 16 value-based agreements with insurance providers.
Healthcare IT News: Will CMS' Acute Hospital Care at Home Waiver Program Become Permanent? (8/28) – In less than three years, CMS’s Acute Hospital Care at Home waiver program has expanded to 125 health systems and 289 hospitals, in 37 states. With it set to end at the end of 2024, Healthcare IT News interview Kuldeep Singh Rajput, CEO and founder of Biofourmis, a remote patient monitoring and telehealth technology company, his expert views on the program, challenges such as managing IT systems or scaling these tech-enabled models, and how to overcome those challenges. Rajput also describes how CMS’s two-year extension could lead to a permanent program.
Home Health Care News: How Home-Based Care Helped the Medicare Shared Savings Program Generate $1.8B In Savings (8/25) – CMS announced that the Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP) saved Medicare $1.8 billion in 2022. Of the highest-performing and innovative Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) involved, some generated savings by integrating home-based care models into their programs. This has been an ongoing record since 2020 as health systems and ACOs expand their home care offerings. In fact, a 2022 study found that two-thirds of ACOs used some sort of home-visit activity.
Inside Telehealth Policy: Lobbyists Confront Challenges in Hospital at Home Push (8/24) – Continued coverage of CMS’ Acute Care at Home program beyond 2024 have many questioning if the program should be permanent. Questions about requiring Medicaid coverage for the program, how it should be paid for, if hospitals count virtual beds in their total bed count, and establishing standard measures and outcomes in time are top of mind as lobbyists push for a permanent HAH program.
Becker's Health IT: Florida Hospital Reaches 200 Hospital-at-Home Patients (8/22) - Orlando Health's Hospital Care at Home program has reached 200 patient admissions in a matter of months. The health system launched the program in February and was the first to be approved for Medicare and Medicaid patients in central Florida. The program provides acute hospital-level care to adult patients who meet specific clinical criteria determined by emergency department and hospital staff members. Patients use portable technology to have 24/7 access to remote monitoring and virtual care from nurses and providers at the Orlando Health Patient Care Hub.
Home Health Care News: How BrightStar Care, Chamberlain University Are Building The Next Generation Of Home-Based Care Workers (8/22) - BrightStar Care and Chamberlain University are teaming up and launching a home health care didactic course under the latter’s Practice-Ready, Specialty-Focused model. As hospitals became the center of the U.S. health system, home-based care work became stigmatized. Despite the budding, integral setting of care it is, students haven’t always viewed the home as a desired place to start their careers. BrightStar and Chamberlain are hoping to change that through a program that exposes students to what it's like being a home-based care worker.
STAT News: What the Hospital-at-Home Movement Tells Us About Igniting Innovation in Health Care (8/21) – The private sector of the U.S. health system tends to adopt valuable innovations faster than the public sector due to red tape and politics. The "hospital at home" (HAH) model is an example of this. However, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic and an extension to the CMS Acute Hospital Care at Home waiver, each sector knows just how the effective hospital-at-home programs are to reducing mortality and costs while increasing patient satisfaction. Therefore, to encourage innovation, the article suggests four key several strategies, including committing to reimbursement by influential payers, sharing information and best practices, reducing uncertainty through permanent CMS waivers, and creating consensus among professionals, society, and institutions to overcome incentives problems.
MedCity News: Opinion: We Need to Expand How We Think About Home-Based Health Care. SNF at Home is a Step in the Right Direction (8/17) – While a recent study shows that a clear majority of seniors would prefer in-home care, many are unaware of the options available to them. However, there is clear case for skilled nursing at home (SNF at home), an example of how providers are delivering enhanced clinical care in the home that is often less costly and shows greater patient improvement. This article posits that policymakers can support payers and providers alike by supporting legislation to expand home-based services.
McKnights Home Care: The Opportunities and Challenges Ahead for Home-Based
Care (8/15) – As our aging population continues to grow, the need for care is growing alongside it. However, with a projected shortage of primary care physicians and registered nurses, solutions point toward the effectiveness of home-based care. Medicare Advantage plan enrollment, which emphasizes value-based care, is helping drive the shift towards home-based care.
Home Health Care News: CVS Health Reiterates Commitment to Driving More At-Home Care in US (8/9) – CVS Health plans to increase home-based care services in the U.S., where only one percent of health care occurs at home since hospitals took center stage. In their efforts to cater to older adults' preference for convenient and comfortable home-based health care, they acquired Signify Health for $8 billion to expand their offerings. In doing so, CVS aims to make value-based care and patient engagement a key factor in their shift to health care delivery.
Modern Healthcare: Mass General Brigham Bets Big on Hospital-at-Home (8/7) - Mass General Brigham sees hospital-at-home care as a big part of its long-term future. In the short term, the nonprofit health system's plan depends on a favorable ruling from CMS. In the coming weeks, Mass General Brigham anticipates word from CMS about regulatory waivers that would enable that expansion by approving Medicare reimbursements for these services that match payments for inpatient care. CMS is still collecting data from the more than 400 hospitals in the waiver program to determine whether Medicare will continue the current payment policy or devise a new one. Whatever CMS decides is likely to provide a roadmap for private health insurance companies.
|
