Provider Aims To Clear The ‘Gray Cloud Over Home Care’

A lack of communication between care providers can be confusing and potentially detrimental to seniors’ health. A New York-based home health care provider rolled out a new initiative that will improve the dialogue between providers, plus do better job of keeping families in the loop.

Alliance Homecare provides home care services, including home health, to seniors in lower New York state, including the five boroughs of New York City and Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester and Rockland Counties.

“There’s been a gray cloud over home care and no one can see inside of it,” Greg Solometo, co-founder and CEO of Alliance Homecare, told Home Health Care News. “We want to create greater transparency.”

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Solometo’s concerns lie in the lack of connectivity between health care providers.

“Nurses don’t talk to skilled nursing facilities, SNFs don’t talk to home caregivers, physicians and specialists don’t talk to each other,” Solometo said. “[Alliance Homecare] is at the center of all of it, so we have the potential to create these bridges in the industry.”

Alliance works to close these gaps with its “concierge home care,” which the company is promoting through a new rebranding campaign.

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Communication is the cornerstone of this care model, which includes a professional care manager that oversees all of the services that a client receives, coordinating care among caregivers, physicians, specialists and other health care providers. Plus, the care manager checks in with the client by phone and stays connected to all family members, wherever they may be located.

This connectivity and quality of care has proven results in the form of improved rehospitalization rates for clients, according to Solometo. He and his team did an analysis of their about 250-person population rate over 18 months, and found that Alliance clients have a 2.7% 30-day readmission rate, compared to an approximately 20% readmission rate for Medicare and Medicaid services, said Solometo.

“I’d like to educate Medicare and Medicaid providers to emulate this system and build bridges of connectivity between services providers,” Solometo said.

Services are broken down into three levels of interdisciplinary care. This more formalized structure of services is meant to make the levels and types of care offered easier for health care organizations to understand and recommend to their patients at discharge.

The three levels of care are Alliance Assist at $28 per hour, Alliance Concierge at $36 per hour, and Alliance Nursing at $115 per hour, each offering progressively more involved care. Within these levels, care can be customized to the client’s needs. Care management is $200 per hour.

Seven ancillary services are offered with all levels of care, beginning with complimentary initial screenings in the areas of physical and occupational therapy, nutrition and organic food program development, mental health therapy, wellness services such as yoga and meditation, financial organization and elder care legal review of important documents such as power of attorney, health care proxy and advanced directives.

The next initiative from Alliance will be an in-home technology platform that will be available for Concierge and Nursing clients and their families, by this fall. The virtual assisted living (VAL) platform, named as a tribute to Solometo’s grandmother, Val, will further foster connectivity to the care team around the clock, as well as provide informative and interactive content.

“It will have video chat capability, a personal emergency response system, a coordinated calendar that families can see, and other features that will further transparency and better communication in home care,” Solometo said.

Written by Elizabeth Jakaitis

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