Even though Arsenal has a large number of care services, home care from Bay Health remains keen on the home care.
By By Health CEO Skelly Wingard aims to improve the quality and accessibility of the company's home health line by strengthening its clinical informatics and working together through service lines and managed care. These initiatives manifest in regulatory uncertainty. The proposed reduction in Medicare's home health rates has led to alarm across the industry. Winderd warned that such reductions could cause many providers to go out of business.
By Bay Health is an affiliate of the University of California San Francisco Health. The organization's service line includes hospice, palliative care, pediatrics and skilled home care. It serves the cities of Marine, San Francisco, San Mateo, Sonoma, the American Canyon, Napa and Vallejo.
Wingard recently caught up with home health news to expand Bay Health's goals, and the company's recruitment strategy, the benefits of being a nonprofit organization, and challenges faced in this space.
Wingard will also be taking part in a panel discussion entitled “Integration Promise: PayVider Model” at the future event at Home Health Care News held at Dallas in Dallas from September 15th to 17th.
The following transcripts have been edited for length and clarity.
HHCN: Your company has a wide range of services. What are your priorities when it comes to the Home Health segment?
WINGARD: We are truly proud to serve many aspects of the care continuum. Currently, we support both pediatric and adult hospice, home hygiene and palliative care. The community also has a very wide range of bereavement services. When it comes to home health, I am amazed at how many opportunities there are to coordinate and collaborate with external partners, not just other service lines. It feels like we've seen how incredible outreach from our health plans, our hospital system and partners across our community are so intriguing to the home health sector and how they differ.
Of course, the goal is to have the highest quality home health services possible in the Bay Area and where we serve. We really focus on accessibility. It makes it accessible to so many people, as many people as possible, as many people as possible, and as many service times as possible, which expands the complexity of the service, such as wound care, infusion care, and other types of complexity.
We are truly looking to expand and enhance our clinical informatics expertise. We have adopted a way in which informatics experts, people who are really knowledgeable about AI, especially home-based care models can use data to create decision-making and electronic medical records to build efficiency. We all know that we need to increase the dollars as much as possible, especially in our home health. We believe that investing in clinical informatics could be a way to support our community with home health and partners.
What is the biggest opportunity Bay Health is seeing in this segment?
Do you partner closely with managed care organizations to support the needs of your home health line? Managed care is only growing and we want to be leaders. Instead of digging into your heels, we want to partner with you and make sure you do whatever it takes to support this patient population. For some reason, there was such resistance to managed care. You need to reduce waste in your system. By By Bay Health is actually a leader who understands especially. We understand efficiency, scale and how to partner successfully to ensure that the transition is safe and seamless. We're reducing the cost of care as much as possible, so we don't have the robust costs we see across healthcare.
What unique approach does your company take to deal with recruitment and retention? What was the outcome?
We are trying to build what we call the path to a care career program. It is designed to draw attention to models of care at home as an incredible opportunity for healthcare professionals. I am a nurse in the background and know that many other fields can be said to be traditionally focused on hospitals through education. Specialized opportunities in home care are paid little attention to in the academic curriculum. We're changing that. We launched a program called Introducing the Healthcare World at one of the high schools in Marin County. We started scholarships at two local universities. We have started a paid internship program for high school students. That's why we have a real experience in all our understanding of healthcare and various career options.
Do you think that being a nonprofit organization will not allow your company to do so?
I think we are really fortunate to have a non-profit corporate structure. Because things like care career programs would not exist without the philanthropy within our organization to raise funds for its development. The operating income we have must return to shareholders. Instead, go to these programs that will help the community.
Last year we invested $4 million in the communities we serve. It is through grant programs of all kinds. Being a nonprofit means being a community partner in a very different way than a for-profit organization.
What other industry challenges are in mind? What strategies did the company implement to combat these challenges?
It's one of the challenges we are experiencing and we are not unique in the industry. This is compensation seen throughout the industry. It is becoming increasingly difficult to compete with the wages and benefits of hospitals in these large organizations and outpatient therapy. We constantly monitor wages, compensation and benefits, and we do our best to learn what small adjustments can be made to stay competitive in the market.
Are there any concerns or changes in policy from the regulators that your company follows? How will this affect your business?
I have great concern about the proposal (home hygiene payments) that Medicare payments have dropped by 6.4%. I think we all really know that there are no home healthcare providers that don't struggle to make margins. This could lead to many people going out of business.
