The healthcare landscape is undergoing a significant transformation, with healthcare at home emerging as one of the fastest-growing segments. To adapt to this shift and offer a comprehensive range of services, hospitals need to enhance their strategies and simultaneously forge partnerships with companies with expertise that successfully extend care into patients' homes.
This article delves into the driving factors behind the growth of healthcare at home and the benefits it brings to health systems and patients. With McKinsey reporting $265 billion worth of care services, representing 25% of total care costs, being spent in the home by 2025, the time is now for hospitals to take action.
Growth Factors in Healthcare at Home
- Convenience and comfort: Patients are increasingly prioritizing convenience in healthcare delivery. Healthcare at home offers a time-saving alternative to hospital visits, catering to patients with mobility issues, chronic conditions, or busy schedules juggling work, childcare, and other responsibilities.
- Cost-effectiveness: Healthcare at home can be more cost-effective for patients, as it eliminates the need for expensive hospital stays. In the case of outpatient physical therapy at home, it is delivered at the same cost of outpatient care at a facility and as a result is 55-70% less costly than traditional home health.
- Aging population: The global aging population is expanding, requiring ongoing medical care. The United States Census Bureau predicts there will be 94 million people aged 65 by 2060. Healthcare at home provides a familiar environment for elderly patients to receive necessary care, particularly for those with mobility issues or chronic conditions.
- Technological advances: Innovations in technology have enabled high-quality healthcare at home. Remote monitoring, telemedicine, and other digital health tools improve patient outcomes, reduce costs, and increase convenience for patients and healthcare providers.
- Pandemic-related behavior change: The COVID-19 pandemic has expedited the adoption of healthcare at home. Patients sought to minimize virus exposure in hospitals and clinics, while healthcare providers had to adapt to the pandemic's challenges, including staff shortages and personal protective equipment scarcity.
Immediate Value Creation for Health Systems
Healthcare at home offers numerous benefits to health systems, including increased revenue, reduced referral leakage, expanded access to care, improved patient satisfaction, and no capital investment required for additional facilities. The outpatient physical therapy landscape is highly competitive due to the prevalence of local clinics, resulting in an average of 50-70% referral leakage for physical therapy within hospitals representing $2.5 billion in potential revenue.
By partnering with healthcare at home companies like Luna, the premier provider of in-home, in-person outpatient physical therapy, hospitals can maintain patients within their systems and adhere to their care and quality standards. This strategic collaboration offers a unique and competitive service that can outperform local clinics.
Improved Patient Quality of Care and Experience
Healthcare at home enhances patients' quality of care and overall experience by providing convenience, comfort, personalized care, increased family involvement, and cost-effectiveness. Services like outpatient physical therapy are particularly well-suited for in-person care delivered at home. Analysis by Scripps Health found that 87% of cases served at a facility for outpatient physical therapy are appropriate for at-home care. Healthcare at home improves patient adherence and outcomes, with 80%+ of patients completing their care plans at home, compared to only 30% in a clinic setting. COVID-19 catalyzed the shift towards healthcare at home by increasing the need for social distancing, causing capacity concerns in hospitals, putting vulnerable populations at risk, and expanding telehealth reimbursement.
Accelerating Healthcare at Home Adoption among Health Systems
Health systems are adopting healthcare at home to meet consumer expectations of quality and convenience, expand access to care and geographic reach, increase revenue and minimize leakage, eliminate the need for capital investments, and improve patient satisfaction and experience. These impacts are particularly relevant given the current financial crisis hospitals face.
Luna is proud to be partnering with innovative health systems such as Providence, Emory Health, UCLA Health, Intermountain Healthcare, and more.
Besides Luna, other notable healthcare at home trailblazers include Dispatch Health, Contessa, Medically Home, and Papa. These companies, along with various remote patient monitoring, mail-order pharmacy, and various virtual health providers, are revolutionizing the healthcare at home movement.
Conclusion
To successfully adopt healthcare at home, health systems may face certain barriers, including finding suitable partners, managing the cost of delivery, and navigating limited reimbursements. Solutions to these challenges include partnering with innovative companies like Luna, which have the necessary technology and clinician density (over 1% of all physical therapists nationally work on the Luna platform) to maintain efficiency and keep drive times down while providing high-quality, in-person care at home.
As healthcare at home continues to grow, it is essential for hospitals to partner with companies that specialize in delivering these services. By doing so, they can enhance patient care and satisfaction, expand their range of services, and remain competitive in the rapidly changing healthcare landscape.