Another large health system is making a concerted effort to provide home-based care services to its patients.
Newport Beach, California-based Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian announced Wednesday that it has launched Hoag at Home, which will provide a slew of at-home care services.
“I think hospitals kind of are seeing the future and some of the threats to the in-patient revenue stream,” Jeff Hammon, the executive director of Hoag at Home, told Home Health Care News. “It makes perfect sense to be looking outside the hospital walls.”
Hammond was brought in to lead Hoag at Home in October. He was pleased to see Hoag’s commitment to launching a wide range of home-based offerings, he said.
As a part of its overall network, Hoag has two in-patient acute-care hospitals, nine health centers and 13 urgent care centers. A nonprofit, the health system serves more than 30,000 in-patients and 48,000 outpatients annually.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) “Acute Hospital Care at Home” waiver has given hospitals and health systems the ability to invest more in hospital-level care at home. As of early June, there were 133 hospitals and 59 health systems in 32 states that had been accepted to participate in the waiver program.
Most hospital leaders hope a version of the waiver will continue post-pandemic.
“I think it’s pretty clear that hospital-at-home, for one, is no longer a thing of the future,” Hammond said. “Hoag wants to make sure that we’re in that space, that we understand the space, and that we’re preparing to really invest in that space. This is a kind of a first move to prepare the infrastructure to be able to have a full hospital-at-home model.”
But this isn’t just about providing hospital-level care at home for Hoag.
Hoag at Home’s home health offerings will include skilled nursing and therapy services, plus medical social services. In addition, it will provide hospice care, palliative care, bereavement services and physician support in the home.
Hoag realized it needed to expand its home-based care offerings to better serve its patients in the Orange County area, eventually adapting to a less in-patient-based system, Hammond said.
“There haven’t been a whole lot of health systems that have committed to having all the home care services under one roof, and we’re very committed to that,” he said. “And I think we see that’s a platform we know we can do well with and be competitive in. It’s pretty unique, and we’re hoping this all comes together in the way we envision it. Specifically the home care and physician pieces, that’s not commonly seen out there.”
Hoag at Home will also eventually provide private-duty home care, home-infusion and home medical equipment, according to Hammond.
Once it does have all of those up and running, it will have a pretty impressive arsenal of available services.
“I think it’s very clear that hospitals have to control their post-acute quality and post-acute spend,” Hammond said. “And there’s a brand issue also — it’s a very competitive marketplace in Orange County. So we want to control that brand awareness in the market. Having a full service, post-acute integrated provider network … really is an effort to continue to be with the trend and an effort to prepare for the future of care. We want it to be up and running to meet those patient needs.”
Hoag at Home has been providing home health and hospice to patients over the last 10 weeks, while the physicians — which will make at-home visits — joined Hoag at Home this month.
Advancements in technology have given the health system confidence that it can treat higher-acuity patients in the home.
“We want to integrate technology, even more so into our home health, hospice and home physician services,” Hammond said. “So we’re looking at some technology platforms that will allow us to do that. … We can’t be at the bedside every day. But with technology now, we can be.
“We have very high-acuity patients going into home health these days, so we’ve got to build a structure that includes technology that allows us to provide better care for those patients, but still, work within the financial parameters of reimbursement,” he added.
Hammond knows the future of health care is in the home, having worked in home health and hospice for nearly 30 years.
But he also recognizes the challenges that face a health system trying to build out a successful home health business for the first time.
“The business has not gotten any easier in the last 29 years,” Hammond said. “So we need to be looking at ways to build a better mousetrap. And I think technology is really going to help us do that.”
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