Transcending Home Care

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Most healthcare providers – especially providers of care at patients’ homes – started their organizations offering one particular service line. Whether that original service was home health, hospice, private duty nursing or something else, many organizations felt the need to expand their services and engage with patients for more needs over longer periods of time.

When these organizations added even one more service, they often began to talk about their “continuum of care.” But how expansive should a continuum be? How can agencies know what service lines to add and when to make the expansions? How do you make margins on new service lines? And what about staffing when it’s challenging enough to keep current positions filled?

In this podcast episode, Rhonda Sanders, chief mission access officer of Empath Health, joins host Stan Massey to share details of how her organization has built a very robust continuum of care that engages patients and families at different stages of life. Empath Health offers 10 service lines – and growing – including a sexual health program for adults of all ages. Rhonda and Stan discuss Empath’s business strategies for adding services, keeping up with staffing demands, the use of telehealth, appealing to managed care plans, different reimbursement models and more.

Rhonda Sanders joined Empath Health in November 2021. Rhonda plays an integral part in helping Empath Health continue to evolve as a customer-driven organization and is responsible for driving growth and enabling access among consumers, payers and referral sources for each of the organization’s services lines as well as overseeing the agency’s managed care strategies. A seasoned executive in healthcare operations, business development and sales, Rhonda has succeeded in leading growth strategies for home-based healthcare providers serving large, multi-state regions. Most recently, Rhonda served as vice president of business development for Amedisys Home Health, Central Region, in Lubbock, Texas. She also served as area vice president of sales/operations for Kindred at Home in Texas, New Mexico, Colorado and Oklahoma.

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It’s no secret that most seniors in America want to maintain their independence for as long as possible. In fact, according to the Disabled Living Foundation, the majority of seniors say they fear losing their independence more than they fear death.

For many, a main hallmark of independence is being able to age in place. A survey by AARP revealed that 90% of Americans age 65 and over want to stay in their home and 80% believe their current residence is where they will live until they die.

Other statistics show 27% of seniors currently live alone – and that number is projected to keep growing as Baby Boomers age. So, a crucial key to empowering seniors to maintain their independence, especially if they live alone, is the use of technology to monitor their health and well-being.

Ryan Herd – founder of Caregiver Smart Solutions and CEO of 1 Sound Choice (a company specializing in smart home automation) – joins host Stan Massey of Transcend Strategy Group in this engaging discussion on remote monitoring technology and its increasingly important role in caregiving.

Whether you’re a professional provider of home-based care or a concerned family member wanting to keep tabs on a senior loved one, existing and emerging technologies are making remote monitoring easier and more effective. Ryan and Stan cover a variety of significant factors for remote monitoring, including fall detection, looking for changes in living habits, tracking clinical vital signs and much more.

With 30 years of experience in smart home technology, Ryan consults with the home building and healthcare industries and is a sought-after speaker. Because of his expertise, he was selected by the National Kitchen & Bath Association to be a 2019 NKBA Insider to assist in educating its members about the importance of collaboration between technology integrators and the design community.

Ryan offers unique insight into smart home technology, the Internet of Things (IoT), and the significance of technology in the home today. He also is the author of “Join the Smart Home Revolution,” Amazon’s #1 best-selling smart home book.

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COVID-19 magnified the need and desire for patients to stay out of hospitals if possible. A national survey conducted by Transcend Strategy Group revealed that more than 60% of family caregivers had greater confidence in the quality of care provided at home during the pandemic versus care in a facility. Plus, the repeating surges in COVID cases across the country pushed many hospitals to the brink – and sometimes beyond – when it came to inpatient beds available.

Cooper Linton – associate VP of Duke HomeCare & Hospice – is at the forefront of helping a major healthcare system rethink how certain patients can receive care at home instead of in a hospital. In this discussion with host Stan Massey of Transcend Strategy Group, Cooper discusses the pioneering efforts of Duke University Healthcare System in starting a COVID Care-at-Home program and examining the option of starting a Hospital-at-Home program.

The conversation covers a variety of issues related to these programs, including patient criteria to identify candidates for home care, the different demands on providers for managing higher acuity patients at home, and the growing imperative for remote patient monitoring and other technologies to enable the efficiencies necessary for a larger home patient census.

Cooper has deep expertise in managing home-based and community-based care. Before taking his current role at Duke HomeCare & Hospice in 2018, he was VP of marketing and business development at Transitions LifeCare (founded as Hospice of Wake County) for 13 years. His career also includes experience with home health providers.

In addition, Cooper is co-host of his own podcast “Edge of Aging” – a series that asks, “What if we reimagined how we provide care for older adults and their caregivers?” and explores the possibilities.

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Due to the historically weak reimbursement stream from CMS for palliative care, providers often have been conflicted with providing this undeniably helpful service and staying out of the red while doing so.

Some hospice providers started their palliative care service line with the mindset that it would be a “loss leader” – they expected to lose money on the service but hoped to build relationships with patients and families sooner, convert them to their hospice care as early as appropriate, and make up for the loss through stronger hospice census and LOS. For most providers, things didn’t really work out that way.

So how can providers deliver the comfort and quality of palliative care without hurting themselves financially ... and build a program that can be sustainable?

In this podcast episode, Mark Hendrix, president of nTakt, joins host Stan Massey of Transcend Strategy Group to discuss wise approaches to solving the palliative care dilemma. The conversation covers billing practices, the role of telehealth, a smart foundational model to build a strong palliative care program, the future of reimbursement and much more.

Mark Hendrix has over 35 years of experience in process improvement and business turnaround. He is trained as a Lean Six Sigma Blackbelt with over 10 years of hands-on experience applying Lean concepts in healthcare settings. Mark also has served as Operations Director for CMMI Palliative Care Grant and has had results published in the Journal of Palliative Medicine.

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In this episode, Transcend Chief Strategy Officer Tony Kudner sits down with Kate Proctor, executive advisor to the National Alliance for Care at Home and chief strategy officer and general counsel at Omnia Healthcare Group. They talk about risk management for marketing home-based care and hospice, and get the latest on the merger between NAHC and NHPCO.