Home Care Resources

If Reimbursing for Visits, a Business will Naturally Increase Visits

Results are in for Year 2 of ACOs
Medicare Seeks Models that Achieve the Triple Aim

At a recent VNAA National Public Policy Leadership Conference, Jim Pyles, one of the proponents of the Independence at Home Project, said, “If you reimburse for visits, a business is going to push making more visits. If you reimburse for episodes, a business will naturally push for getting more episodes.” That was his reasoning behind the ACO model not bringing in as much savings as originally anticipated. However, in a report just released and published in Modern Health, the results are coming in for the Accountable Care Organizations that were set up as one of the trial Medicare models to see if the triple aim can be achieved: lower costs, better patient care and a healthier population.

The Pioneer ACOs showed improvements in three key areas: financial, quality of care, and patient experience. However, the model has not really changed, only collaboration to accomplish the results. The Independence at Home Project, on the other hand, targets that 10% of the population that is the heavy user of Medicare dollars. The following is taken directly from the website explaining the Independence at Home Model, but it really does explain the project and its intent very well:

“There are 3-4 million seniors now living with multiple chronic illnesses such as diabetes, lung and heart disease who are too ill or disabled to easily visit their physician when they need care. These seniors, representing approximately 10% of Medicare beneficiaries, account for two thirds of Medicare’s expenditures.

These seniors are typically unable to access a primary care physician’s office for needed care, instead of going to the ER or being hospitalized. These are the patients who place the largest burden on Medicare, and this problem isn’t going away. The number of people with multiple chronic illnesses will grow to 6-8 million by 2025.

The Solution
The quickest way to control health costs is by addressing these highest cost patients first. House calls are a solution to the rising costs of helping home-limited patients with multiple chronic conditions. At $1,500 per ER visit, we can show that the cost of 10 house calls more than offsets the expense of an avoidable ER visit. Savings are even greater for avoided hospitalizations.

Improved Care for Patients, Savings for Medicare
Home-based primary care programs have the potential to save 20-40% on Medicare’s most expensive patients by bringing them care in their homes. IAH provides for care coordination across all care settings. Providers are also accountable for good care and reduced cost. Overall this is a win for patients, their families, and Medicare!”

We all know that the boomers are getting older, and as this “pig in a python” population cohort gets older, the system is going to have to change to accommodate the needs. Paying privately for care is one option, but more people cannot afford to cover their long-term care costs than can. It is encouraging to see that we are, as a health care delivery system, looking at innovative and effective new ways to use home care as a low cost alternative and a viable option.

Home Care at the Table, Finally, in Future of Home Health Discussions

 

institute of Medicine Holds DC Workshop on Home Health
IOM and AAHQI hold workshop in DC on Future of Home Health

Why has home care not been included in so many of the new initiatives created by the ACA? Some say it is the lack of national unified leadership, and that there is no one coordinated voice for home care that speaks for our industry. The many factions at the national level represent only their constituents’ interests, and have not (until now) rallied together to try and impact how home care can be a true player in the health care delivery system. September 30 and October 1, the Institute of Medicine is holding a two day workshop, free and open to the public, but prior registration is required.

This workshop is an offshoot of the Alliance for Home Health Quality and Innovation, a group spearheaded by Dr. Steven Landers, who is now with the VNA Health Group. Some might remember him from his Cleveland Clinic days when he was active with the Private Duty Homecare Association and received a prestigious award from NAHC.

The agenda is almost final. Online signups are open now. Not on your agenda? It would be a wise use of your time, as some of the leaders, the true leaders in home care, are either speaking or leading panel discussions. And the gambit ranges from home care to home health care to telehealth to insurance to CMS. It really is an open forum for the future of home health, and it is exciting. Also, the education process to move home care into the forefront when decisions are being made as to how care is best provided is crucial.

Without a unified message and lobby, home care has been relegated to only 4% of the Medicare spent on health care. Since it is the choice of 99% of those people who are asked about where they would like to recuperate or where they would like to go after hospitalization, and it is the lowest cost alternative, home care should have a more powerful role in the ACA.

Below are the stated workshop objectives for the September 30 and October 1 workshop:

· Provide an overview of the current state of home health care.
· Examine the particular role of Medicare-certified home health agencies in achieving the triple
aim: to improve the quality of patient care, improve population health, and reduce costs.
· Explore how to integrate home health care into the future health care marketplace.
· Discuss how to facilitate the future role of home health care (e.g., workforce, technology,
infrastructure, policy reform).
· Highlight research priorities to help clarify the value of home health care.

This study is sponsored by AXXESS, and they are a proponent of making home care the preferred choice of those who need care some time in their lives.

For more information on the future of home  health project, click here.

Get involved in shaping the future of home care in America.

 

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To know home care is to love home care.

SEO is based on relevant content
Engagement and content are crucial to getting SEO results

Anyone who has a frailty or an illness, an accident or an operation knows that it takes time to bounce back. And where better to bounce? Home! Studies prove that patients fare better in a familiar environment, and what is more familiar than home? Selling or marketing home care, is really just educating and explaining about it, how it can be used, who pays for it, and the benefits it brings to those who partake of the services.

That is the easy part about marketing home care. The hard part is getting heard above the noise, getting found on the internet, having someone call and experience a great, informational and helpful call about the problem being experienced. The psychology behind marketing home care is really about being where those searching for answers will find your agency. But, don’t a variety of people go about finding the answers in a variety of ways? YES! However, with a good strategy, and a good integration of marketing efforts, the coverage for places where people are looking can be accomplished.

SEO is front and center for any strategy to get found where people are looking. For, no matter the age, the economic group, location, using the internet to find answers to problems is a growing trend. That trend is replacing any traditional source, and, that trend is getting stronger. The Internet is getting stronger as well. Social media engagement is indexed for search engines. Reviews of services are proliferating. Media all have a presence on the Internet and in social media In short, there are many ways that information can be used, can be spread across channels, and can help someone looking for services to find what they need.

At the heart of this is a solid strategy that works towards getting your services showcased across multiple channels so that your agency will be found when someone looking for care is seeking answers.

At the heart of this is a good website. corecubed was recently recognized as a top web design firm in Louisville. however, it is more than just the design of a website that makes is one of the stops along the continuum of getting found when people are searching for answers for home care. It is how the site is designed: is it clean, easy to navigate, easy to inquiry about service, HIPAA compliant? Are the terms used those that a user would find understandable and are those terms what a user, a user without knowledge of the industry, would enter into a search engine?

The recent Home Care Pulse 2014 Private Duty Benchmarking Study ranked SEO as the #1 method that agencies say they get referrals. This means that the results from a strategy to be found are working. SEO, however, is changing, and it is changing rapidly. Join us for a free webinar on June 11th to find out what your agency can do to get found, and how you can start a strategy that uses SEO as one of the guides as to how y our agency should go to market.

corecubed has been focusing on getting home care agencies recognized in a crowded market since 1998. We know home care. We know how to get found. It is up to your agency to have a good inquiry process in place, perform a good in-home assessment and make the right match between caregiver and client.

Call us at corecubed, email us, or go online and submit an inquiry. You will be glad you did.

Telehealth and Diabetic Retinopathy in Kentucky

Early screening prevents blindness
Telehealth services blindness issues

Part 2 of my report on the Health Enterprises Network presentation last week is a focus on, if you can imagine it, perhaps telehealth can do it. Rob Sprang has been the director of Kentucky TeleCare at the University of Kentucky Chandler Medical Center since 1996, and program manager of the Kentucky TeleHealth Network (KTHN). It is under his leadership that the issue of blindness from untreated diabetic retinopathy has been tackled in rural Kentucky Counties. The amazing thing is that the technology is now available, affordable and in use. If detected early enough, diabetic retinopathy does not have to lead to blindness. 50% of diabetics in rural Kentucky do not consult a physician, even though diabetic, and even though a screening would prevent blindness. Bringing the doctor to those folks will make a difference, not only in their lives, but in the lives of their caregivers and in the utilization of the system.

Sprang serves on the board of CTeL Innovations as well, and is active in trying to remove obstacles to using telehealth in our reformed healthcare delivery system. Since our current medical system and licensure are location specific, the addition of telehealth causes issues. One obstacle to overcome is credentialing, and credentialing by proxy is the preferred solution. It is only through perseverance and a focus on the value that telehealth brings that these obstacles will be overcome and telehealth will become a viable component of our system.

Funding is always an issue. Our health care system is so based on reimbursement that many services are based on reimbursement, not what the patient needs. We walk a fine line between serving the populations’ health needs, and getting reimbursed to provide services. Utilizing telehealth in a variety of settings is a disruptive technology that will change how health care is delivered, the reach of specialists, and the outcomes for patients who need ongoing monitoring, or have a disease that requires a medical professional to make decisions to care on a sporadic basis.

Moral to this post is, think about telehealth as just another option to put on the table to expand our scarce human resources as we start to see the numbers from the age wave climbing, and as services become more scarce.

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eHealth for Lifelong Wellness and Aging

Talking to a doctor is as easy as booting up
Home to hospital or home to doctors and nurses with webcams

Louisville is the world leader in lifelong wellness and aging care. So, it should be no surprise that the Health Enterprises Network here is active and engaged. On Friday May, 10th,  the topic was eHealth, and the setting as well as the information is noteworthy. Harshaw Trane hosted the event, and we were connected to DC via video on one of the devices that Trinity Video supplies for telemedicine. Funny thing is that the same event could have been held with a tablet, but as John Jennings from Trinity said, “Folks want to see something that looks medical.” And, the TV monitor on top of the remote stand, did, in fact, look medical.

Tom Morris from the Health and Human Services in DC spoke remotely via video, discussing the origins of funding for telehealth (1997 for Medicare), and the impact that the mandate for rural coverage with telehealth is having on funding for coverage. An additional benefit is that someone needs to manage and work with the technology, so there is additional education in technology for those rural areas to be able to help themselves use the technology. Morris indicated there is a strong federal telehealth partnership. Much of the new interest has been since the White House Rural Council was created in 2011 with a goal to better serve rural communities.

Morris said there have been more Washington briefings in this last year than the 10 previous years, and that the told of telehealth is evolving in health care environments. As a follow-up to these comments and insights, from Home Health Care news on Friday as well, reporting that the home health tech market is projected to reach $5.8 billion by 2018, which is really doubling revenues in 4 years. A lot of this growth is simply growth of technology, but it is also growth that is aiimed at reaching the Triple Aim goals of CMS, which is better patient care, better health coverage, and reduced costs.

Companies like Advanced TeleHealth Solutions and AXXESS are both taking advantage of the value added component that the industry wants to add. Advanced Telehealth Solutions offers outsouced telehealth through a call center that is in the process of being URAC certified. AXXESS provides mobile enabled business management and scheduling software for the Medicare certified market. In both instances, these businesses are ahead of the curve, and are levering technology as a way to make the patient experience better, to reduce costs to providers as well as the system, and are enabling more people to be served in the preferred  health care setting – the patient’s home.

Today I attended a workshop on technology around the engagement online. What I see from my vantage point as a thought leader in the home care industry, is that bringing value to those we serve and care for at  home, means better communication, better processes, better reporting, better access, and the home health care industry as well as the private pay home care industry are really just in the beginning of the disruption that changes in technology allow. Fasten your seat belts. if you are not already on board with adding the best technology to your business, the voyage is happening rapidly.

Join the conversation and the  movement. Want to have a discussion on how to best prepare for the future incorporating what is new? Give us a shout at corecubed. We will gladly engage.

 

 

 

 

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