Summer ‘15
11
FEATURE
The Role of Technology in Home Care Moving Forward
ACO or Not, These Trends are Not Going to Change…
By Elek Hutchinson, HealthCare Synergy, Inc.
T
oto, we’re not in Kansas
anymore…” has been an age-
old quote, which has been long
overused in describing the ever-
changing home care industry in the post-
Affordable Care Act (ACA) world. From
a continuous reign of reimbursement cuts
to pure change in philosophy regarding the
home care model moving to Accountable Care
Organization (ACO) type-structures, you might
be feeling stranded in how to see the up and up
in our industry. The positive aspect which seems
to be emerging out of these arbitrary changes
are the numerous advances in technology
now available to agencies to help them gain
relevance, whether they are moving towards an
ACO program or focusing on how to further
strengthen their reimbursement.
Bundling payments is a hot topic that has been
addressed countless times over the past few
years – however with the latest legislation, such
as the Bundling and Coordinating Post-Acute
Care Act of 2015 (BACPAC) and Value-Based
Purchasing (VBP) Model Pilot Program, it may
come to fruition sooner than previously thought.
The BACPAC legislation would “require a single
bundled payment for post-acute care services
under Medicare parts A and B.” While this is
still being discussed, the 2015 Home Health
Proposed Rule already has the VBP Program
installed. The VBP plan will prompt value based
off of clinical outcomes with Home Health rates
modified 5-8% in either direction based on if
clinical goals were achieved.
Neither of these is related directly to an ACO
– so don’t think if you are not involved in one,
that they don’t apply to you…they will in time.
However, there are a number of technology
trends available (and growing) to agencies
in order to combat new rates and maximize
reimbursement based off of clinical outcomes.
Take a look below and see what could potentially
help your agency in the future:
Self-Monitoring, Management, & eVisits
– The electronic medical device market
has spiked as of late with an estimated 14.3
million consumers utilizing home health
monitoring technologies in 2014. That number
is forecasted to rise to 78.5 million in the
next six years, according to a study done by
Tractica, a Colorado consulting group. The
advancement of mobile technology from
adopting “eVisits”(virtual physician visits
through an internet connection) to monitoring
devices that can prompt the patient to feed
vital information back to the home health
agency, these options bring validity to the “less
visits is more” CMS mentality in order to curb
health care costs.
In a conversation I had with one particular
independent mid-size agency owner a month
ago, he explained how Accountable Care
Organizations (ACOs) were approaching
him because of his agency’s skilled use of
monitoring equipment. By providing patients
with vital monitoring equipment (not necessarily
connecting back to the agency electronically),
training, and a daily diary, patients are able to
take ownership for their own care and report to
the agency when they notice any deviations in
their baseline values. “We were able to get the
cost of these items down to the same rate of
one skilled nursing visit – I can guarantee that
we have saved multiple visits per episode due to
our use of equipment and patient monitoring.”
The agency is now receiving referrals from one
of the more successful ACOs in the Midwest.
“
