Last Monday I delivered the opening keynote at the first annual "Healthcare in Transition: Thrive" conference to an audience of people whose business and professional focus is skilled home health and hospice. Tim Rowan, Editor of the Homecare and Technology Report, pulled together this summit. Tim opened the conference by offering his prediction that thousands of home health agencies across the country will shut their doors due to their inability to adjust to the competitive home health market and increased regulatory scrutiny. He challenged attendees to go beyond their traditional markets and develop new revenue and business opportunities. He didn't just suggest they survive, but rather thrive.
My comments reinforced Tim's message and included four areas:
• The changing landscape and business challenges created by the Affordable Care Act
• Two past, but highly relevant, efforts I led during my career at Kaiser Permanente
• How home care and other care and support providers in the community can leverage their unique advantages to position themselves for success
• How technology will be key in helping to solve some of the challenges
What is home health's unique advantage? Home health is just what it sounds like – it provides in-home services to those with progressing serious chronic conditions allowing loved ones to be present and part of the healing process. Aging-in-place feels comfortable, familiar and safe, allowing more emotional energy to be spent on healing and not fear.
Is opportunity knocking? It is, and often times areas of opportunity overlap, including:
• Accountable Care Organizations and Bundled Payment Models
• Transitions Care Management
• Advanced Chronic Condition Management, and
• Remote monitoring and care of older adults who want to stay where they live as long as possible.
To those in the room, I mentioned that AARP and the Institute of Medicine both report that there is an increasingly inadequate number of family and appropriately prepared professional caregivers. Technology solves for some of this imbalance if appropriately integrated and targeted. Technology also plays a critical role in the business opportunities listed above. In future posts I will discuss each of these opportunities and how technology can help.
– Richard Della Penna, Chief Medical Officer at Independa, Inc.
