Perspectives on the Future of Home Care

Recently, over 200 home care executives, who are striving to take their agency to the next level, gathered at the Northeast Home Health Leadership Summit in Boston. The Summit, now in its eighth year, brought together thought leaders from the business and policy sectors, and focused on future trends in health care and management and health care reform.

Attending the event as a sponsor gave us an in-depth look at the topics, which led to many thought-provoking conversations with attendees and presenters. Industry leaders shared key messages about innovative health delivery models, the importance of educating hospitals about the value of home care and the advantages of electronic health records within the health care continuum. Their vision of the future of home care had a reoccurring theme - prepare your agency to connect to the entire health care spectrum to provide patient-centric care.

Michael Dowling, President and CEO of North Shore-LIJ Health System, New York State's largest integrated health care system with total revenue in excess of $4.5 billion, encouraged home care agencies to get connected to their health care community. Dowling shared a number of strategies to help home care agencies educate hospital CEOs about home care. By developing a solid partnership with top hospital administration, agencies have the opportunity to engage with the hospital community and share the benefits of home care. Dowling stressed that home care has an opportunity for growth and hospitals can be the perfect partner to help position agencies for the future.

Daniel Sisto, President of the Healthcare Association of New York State (HANYS) said it is all about relationships. Positive partnerships and relationships can help the home care community gain recognition as vital providers of care, as well as help to improve patient care, outcomes and quality of service. Sisto believes that in order to build these positive relationships, the home care community needs to be able to showcase and quantify the value of home care as an efficient and critical part of the health care continuum. Sisto shared his vision about the power of relationship building and the numerous benefits of forging relationships to maximize success and position home care as a key industry.

Musood Pirzada the Director of Information Technology at the Center for Rehab and Post Acute Care, Cleveland Clinic shared the importance of connecting to the entire spectrum of health care providers in an effort to deliver patient-centric care. Pirzada has implemented a number of innovative IT projects that have automated and integrated home care services including, deploying over three hundred tablets with wireless technology to implement a state-of-the-art point of care system for home care clinicians. The Cleveland Clinic quickly recognized the benefits of implementing connected care, including consistency of care, improved patient outcomes and increased regulatory compliance. Pirzada stressed the significance of using an integrated application to build a strategic foundation to connect to the continuum of care.

The consensus at the Summit was that these are exciting times, and a great opportunity for the home health and hospice industry. Although, as many of the industry experts expressed, agencies will need to invest in various tools and resources to strengthen the home care system for the future.

Can your technology platform enable you to capitalize on the opportunities of the future? Learn how connecting to the healthcare continuum will help your agency provide patient-centric care, improve revenue opportunity and reduce operating costs. Our experts can help you effectively create a technology strategy that will dramatically assist your agency in creating success today and in the future. Call 717.283.0980 or email learnmore@thornberryltd.com.