Posted Wednesday, October 11, 2023
Personal home care and home health care are both branches connected to the post-acute care family tree. As such, home care leaders believe that there are numerous ways that their organizations can help alleviate home health provider pain points.
One major pain point that can be seen across home health care are referral rejection rates. Last year, the industry had a 76% referral rejection rate, compared to 54% in 2019, according to data from WellSky.
Jeff Bevis, chief operating officer at Caring Senior Service, sees home care as a natural ally for home health providers that are struggling in this area.
“It’s been a matter of time [that we] partner with them,” he told Home Health Care News. “[One way we do] is by trying to limit the hours, or the time, that the home health nurse is spending with their client. In other words, when the home health nurse is with a client for 15, 30 or even 60 minutes, home care workers can pick up more of the non-medical client needs to keep them happy and healthy in the home.”
“We assigned a care manager to each of those home health agencies, and they’re meeting with those agencies once a week to talk through the patients that are most in need of non-medical home care activities and services, in order to reduce the amount of time and pressure on the home health agency,” Bevis said. “It lets us pick up a larger part of that slack for them, and makes more efficient use of their home health nurses.”
On its end, partnering with home health providers has been a referral boon for Caring Senior Service.
“It’s reinforcing existing referrals,” Bevis said. “In some cases, it’s in strengthening new or early referral source relationships.”
Griswold CEO Michael Slupecki pointed out that home health bonuses and penalties are tied to areas that fall under home care’s direct purview.
“The OASIS-based measures all center around the ability to self-care — from grooming, dressing, bathing, toileting and eating — all things that we address with the home care model,” he told HHCN.
“We have tremendous ability, in a non-medical way, to help prevent admissions,” Slupecki said. “We can ensure that the home is a safe environment, we can assist in transfer. On the heart failure side, just monitoring weight gain or loss. On the UTI side, which is a big reason for admissions, just monitoring the frequency of urination. Home health is designed to be curative, where we view our services more on the wellness side.”
Synergy HomeCare is no stranger to partnering with home health agencies.
“I think the greatest challenge in creating partnerships between home health and home care is finding a payer source,” he said. “Most of our examples of care collaboration occur with clients receiving Medicare on the home health side, and using private-pay on the home care side. In some cases, there may be a funding source like an ACO, but more often than not, because Medicare does not cover home care, it does become a little more challenging.”
Source: HHCN+
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