We have often spoken about ‘the provider of the future’. We unabashedly challenge potential attendees every time we put on a conference or workshop. This late June 2012, the Supreme Court Ruling on the Affordable Care Act (ACA) assures us a different future for care at home. Every provider who is around in five years will be proficient at real clinical outcomes, not just scoring. Hospitals will partner with providers who can keep patients from being rehospitalized. Each of the home care agencies of the future will have a new skillset, collaboration across the continuum. The company caring for the aged, ill, and disabled at home will be ultra-efficient fiscally. There will be far fewer providers, but the number of patients requiring home health care will explode, as the ACA moves care into the home and community. Opportunity will be abundant for the organization that can adapt.
Many of you are already feeling the pinch of what will amount to $40 billion in cuts to Medicare home health over the next ten years. Rebasing of payment rates for Medicare Home Health is scheduled to begin in 2014, but may start sooner. New competitors, beyond ACOs, will be providing care at home. Or maybe your agency will partner with those yet to be invented providers. Broad innovations in care models are being promulgated by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI). Knowing about these grants and perhaps tackling an innovation challenge yourself could provide you with a quantum leap into the future.
Knowing your numbers, financial, clinical, length of stay, average HHRG, etc. will be critical. As evidenced by ZPIC audits, those agencies with aberrant benchmarks will deal with much more scrutiny from benefits integrity contractors. We have long been disappointed about the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission’s (MedPAC’s) continued targeting of home health. MedPAC only advised Congress, which did not always choose to act. The Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), also included in the ACA, will have the authority to implement changes, not just suggest them to Congress.
Home care providers from across Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana are joining us in Point Clear, as the conference’s prearranged room block has filled. They feel confident that the will be among the providers who will innovate and provide the ingenuity needed by healthcare in the future. Rooms can only be obtained now by going to the Grand Hotel at Point Clear’s website directly. We hope you will join us.
