A number of forces are driving the trend toward healthcare at home, from consumer preferences to market realities and workforce patterns. Moving care into the home can be a triple threat: decompressing acute facilities, alleviating our burnt out healthcare workforce and preserving acute care margins.
In a June webinar hosted by Becker's Hospital Review and sponsored by DispatchHealth — a turnkey in-home system of care — three panelists discussed how their healthcare systems are approaching extending services into the home. The discussion was moderated by Dave Dookeeram, DispatchHealth chief of staff. Panelists were:
- Nick Archer, vice president, ventures operations, AdventHealth in Altamonte Springs, Fla. AdventHealth is a non-profit health system with nearly 50 hospital campuses and hundreds of care sites in diverse markets throughout nine states.
- Winjie Tang Miao, senior executive vice president and chief operating officer, Texas Health Resources based in Arlington. Texas Health Resources is a nonprofit health system in North Texas with 29 hospital locations — including acute care, short stay, rehabilitation and transitional care facilities.
- Susanna Rustad, chief procurement officer and executive director of virtual care, UCI Health in Orange, Calif. UCI Health is Orange County's only academic health system and is home to renowned healthcare providers and leading-edge medical facilities.
Four key takeaways were:
1. Healthcare is rapidly moving to the home. Many trends are driving more healthcare in the home. "We have a rapidly growing $4 trillion healthcare system that is unsustainable, and there are many lower-cost alternatives that are attempting to disrupt and really do not complement the existing healthcare system," Dookeeram said. "That can be confusing to patients and frankly may not ultimately yield the results we want, which are clinically valid outcomes at a lower cost."
Post-COVID consumer expectations are a big driver too. "Choice of setting impacts consumers' perception of care," Archer said. "Our focus is really providing great options for consumers across multiple channels."
2. Among the reasons health systems are focused on in-home care is as a hedge against staff shortages and margin compression. Since the pandemic, health systems have struggled with margins and staffing shortages, in part because of the cost of contract labor. Extending the continuum of care into the home can help since delivering care in the home is less capital-intensive and less labor-intensive, and yields better margins. Home care also appeals to many nurses. "Workforce expectations are also changing," Miao said. "They are looking for more flexibility and they want more convenience, for sure."
3. In home-care can offer cost savings, despite potentially lower reimbursement. Building and operating healthcare facilities requires enormous amounts of capital. With the cost per bed to build running as high as $4 million for traditional hospital facilities in states like California, healthcare at home offers more cost-effective pathways for delivering care and for health system growth, without requiring the same levels of investment.
But more importantly, it offers cost savings for patients. "Diversifying [the site of care] really gives us the opportunity to look at our challenges of fixed infrastructure cost, the fixed labor structures, and how to quickly address this chronic disease that we have, a lot of that has to do with our partnerships, being creative so that we can pivot at this time.”
4. DispatchHealth brings the power of the hospital to the comfort of the home. DispatchHealth has built a complete system of care, refined over eight years by delivering care for hundreds of thousands of patients. This system of care is built to deliver care across the healthcare continuum, to keep patients healthy at home. It has four components: a proprietary technology platform, connectivity, flexible 24/7 care built around the patient and clinical capabilities. Through this system of care, DispatchHealth delivers unparalleled care coordination, customer satisfaction and cost savings to major markets throughout the US.
As healthcare organizations consider how best to deliver home-based care, organizations are looking at options to build, buy or partner. Partnership with an organization like DispatchHealth offers speed, expertise and scalability for the modern healthcare provider organization.
To register for upcoming webinars, click here.