In 2020 many of us learned how to go to work and attend school without leaving home. To stay safe, we met up with friends and family via video chat, and had groceries delivered. And health insurance providers and health care systems began to further embrace home delivery culture to bring care to the home.
Initially, many programs focused on keeping vulnerable patients out of hospitals for their own safety as well as to free up beds, staff, and other resources for those in greater need. But, as with the advent of telemedicine, patients and providers alike are seeing advantages to home health care that suggest it will play a larger role in the future.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced in January an expansion of the Home Health Value-Based Purchasing Model (HHVBP). The model aims to incentivize home health care providers by increasing Medicare reimbursements up to 6% based on quality performance measures. It can also penalize them for poor performance. Analysis by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) found HHVBP to be successful at both improving quality of care for Medicare members and reducing costs.
CMS also announced the Acute Hospital Care at Home program in November 2020 to increase capacity for hospitals to care for critical COVID-19 patients. The program enables hospitals to provide hospital-level care in the home for a range of conditions such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and congestive heart failure. There has been significant interest in this program with a growing number of hospitals participating.
More broadly, at-home health care can help providers identify patients with additional social needs and ensure that they can access resources including transportation and meals. And advances in technology make remote visits and monitoring more accessible and affordable than ever before. The use of telehealth has soared during this time, as patients have sought care during isolation.
Here are examples of how health insurance providers are meeting people’s health care needs where they live:
- Aetna expanded their benefits to include additional telehealth services with no cost-sharing by patients, and free delivery of prescription medications through CVS pharmacies.
- In Pennsylvania, Allegheny Health Network (AHN) is expanding its Home Recovery Care For over a year, AHN has been providing at-home hospital care to members of Highmark’s Medicare Advantage plans
- In December 2020, CVS Health was selected by HHS to pilot the administration of the bamlanivimab monocolonal antibody therapy to COVID-19 patients in their homes or long-term care facilities. Conducting the intravenous infusions in patients’ homes aims to make the therapy more accessible to those who would most benefit and do so safely, as well as relieve pressure on hospitals already strained by the pandemic.
- To help patients access care at their convenience, Kaiser Permanente physicians and therapists can now refer patients to mental health and wellness apps and online resources through their electronic health record system as a part of a treatment plan.
- Humana has been an industry leader in at-home solutions, separating their Home Solutions work into its own line of business in July of 2019, ahead of the pandemic. In their announcement, the company cited home care as an important part of an integrated care model that is affordable and accessible for the people they serve.
“In the absence of COVID,” said Susan Diamond, segment president, in a recent article from Colorado Public Radio, “I think it probably would have taken three or more years to reach the level of interest and adoption that we’re likely to see in 2021.”