HHCN's future meetings, which will be held in Dallas from September 15-17, will be a great opportunity to learn more about the topics discussed in this article, as well as other ways providers are innovating. Click here to learn more and book tickets.
Innovations in the home care industry are not constantly reinventing care delivery, but are driving meaningful change by making it easier and more efficient.
By leveraging technology and other innovations, providers such as Bayada can improve recruitment, reduce falls, and make work for home care workers easier for telecommuting and healthview Home Healthcare services.
Mike Johnson, chief researcher of home care innovation at Bayada Home Health Care News Webinar, said “Innovation isn't necessarily innovation. “Innovation can simply be a little more careful. We go from simple things that have a big impact to big things that have a big impact.”
Based in New Jersey, Baiada, Pensau Kentownship offers home health, hospice and behavioral health services internationally in 22 states. Overall, Bayada has around 32,000 employees nationwide. In 2019, the company moved to become a non-profit organization.
Innovative technologies, including technology, help providers succeed under risk bearing or value-based models by providing actionable data to meet reimbursement requirements under risk bearing or value-based models, according to Monica Cutia, vice president of clinical operations at HealthView Home Healthcare Services.
“Over the past few years, we've shifted our focus from the amount of patients to the quality of their care and the outcomes of the care we provided (we saw it),” Katia said. “What we're looking at is leveraging data, planning care, and using technology to make that care come about in a timely and efficiently, and making sure everything is patient-centric and personalized to each patient.”
Based in Cerritos, California, Healthview offers skilled nursing visits in the home, personal mandatory nursing, respite care and personal care. The provider was first established as a non-profit adult day care program, then sold for commercial purposes, with a focus on home health care.
Technological innovation
Among the major innovations in home care is remote patient monitoring. This technology, coupled with predictive analytics, helps home care providers keep an eye on ever-evolving health conditions.
“We can't be there 24/7, so by partnering with doctors, hospitals and our aid facilities, we were able to wear these technologies so that we could identify changes in patients and identify potential issues before we go to the hospital,” Cutia said. “So, by shifting to a more reactive approach than an aggressive (one) we have prevented these hospitalizations, improved patient outcomes, and helped keep patients at home rather than in a keen environment of care.”
Monitoring remote patients combined with risk prediction models helps Viada identify high-risk patients, coordinate care plans, and better allocate resources. These tools are “incredibly helpful” to care for quality, Johnson said.
Bayada is also working on using technology to reduce patient falls. Providers are in the process of building risk algorithms using electronic medical records (EMR) to intervene to identify when patients are at risk of falls and to reduce falls.
Bayada still decides the best intervention to develop and deploy this technology, but preliminary results show a 40% reduction in the rate of adverse falls.
Technology also helps to address one of the most important and ever-present challenges in the home care industry: workforce shortages.
Technology including AI is one way to help caregivers concentrate on client care, according to Help from home, Sarah Anderson, Senior Vice President of Caregivers.
“What's energizing me the most is my focus on making[the caregiver's]job easier,” Anderson said. “It's hard to make things easier, but being able to focus on client care is probably the most important thing we can do: whether it removes the administrative burden from caregivers or clicks a button to align the right client.
Chicago-based Help at Home offers home care and care coordination in 11 states. It operates over 200 locations and employs 60,000 caregivers. The company counted 1,300 caregivers and 1,500 clients in November with the acquisition of Caregiver Services Inc.
Caregiver-focused technology help includes a platform that allows you to schedule 24/7 online interviews when applying for roles. The provider said it has been extremely successful with the model, growing from 3,000 to 4,000 caregivers.
The company also digitized the documents to reduce the burden on caregivers and administrative staff. Anderson said it allows nurses to use voice data capture on their notes, limiting the time they spend in the office and allowing more time in the field with clients.
Operating system improvements also help to preserve them. Anderson doesn't want to care for his clients, so caregivers don't quit their job. By removing some tasks from the caregiver plate, help at home achieved 94.6% caregiver retention in the first 30 days.
HealthView leverages technology to make processes more efficient. Creating an interoperable platform that streamlines documentation and communications between clinicians, physicians, offices and community partners makes it easier for back-office staff to receive updates from this sector and receive orders from doctors in a more timely manner.
“The theme for us is to find an EMR system that doesn't really put a burden on clinicians, really helps AI and its workflows, give clinicians time and give time to patients and their families,” Katia said. “Ultimately, as clinicians, that's what we are and that's what we do.”
Issues for innovation
From the risk of overuse of AI to policies that may hinder the adoption of providers' most cutting-edge techniques, implementing innovative strategies is not without challenges.
AI can become a tool to reduce labor burdens and improve care and efficiency, but providers should keep technology concerns in mind.
“What I'm probably most concerned about is that people trust AI before they should,” Johnson said. “The place where you have to spend your work is checking for accuracy. … Turn on AI ambi entry and stuff like that and say, “It's okay, this is great.”
The technology is not perfect yet, but Andelside said the industry is largely paying attention to it. People should not be afraid to use AI.
Contradictions across payers are also making innovation difficult, Cutia said.
“Medicare, healthcare, private insurance, everyone has their own rules, their own requirements,” she said. “It's difficult to expand the new model as Medicare expects this beyond 100 different requirements. Medicaid expects this. After that, UnitedHealth wants us X, Y, Z. You're asking the clinician to do 100 different things for the same outcome, so you'll eat a lot of time from the patients.”
The proposed Medicare home health reimbursement cut amounts to a total of 9% reduction, poses a major threat to home health providers looking to innovate, Johnson said. The proposed cuts and efforts to curb payments send a message that CMS doesn't trust the provider, he said, misconfusing the entire industry with a few bad actors.
Fighting the proposed Medicare home health payment cuts will be Johnson's top priority next year.
“What policymakers need to understand is that our operating surplus is part of our innovation fund,” Johnson said. “How do we get better? We're self-funded, we're self-funded, we're happy to do that. But we need to think of it as more than money to enter an executive's bank account.
