As the regulatory landscape continues to incentivize home-based care, health system leaders plan to beef up their investments in the space. Along these lines, 81% of decisionmakers intend to increase their investment in remote care technologies in the next 12 months.
That’s according to a recent survey conducted by Current Health, a Boston-based company with a remote care technology platform that helps health care providers in offering home-based care. For the survey, Current Health collected responses from 250 health system leaders between December 2020 and January 2021.
In light of the COVID-19 emergency, there has been more regulatory leeway around providing care in the home setting.
“COVID-19 certainly initiated the shift to broad remote healthcare delivery in the U.S., but the ongoing challenges presented by the variants continue to reinforce the importance of care outside the hospital moving forward,” Chris McCann, co-founder and CEO of Current Health, told Home Health Care News in an email. “The longer we go before a ‘post-pandemic health care,’ the more deeply integrated remote and home-based care will become.”
Last year, the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) introduced its “Acute Hospital Care At Home” wavier program. The CMS wavier — a COVID-19 relief measure — created a reimbursement opportunity for hospitals already working in the in-home care space, as well as those looking to enter for the first time.
More recently, the Choose Home Care Act of 2021 was introduced into the U.S. Senate in July. If signed into law, Choose Home would give home-based care providers the ability to offer personal care services, remote monitoring, meals support and other services to nursing home-eligible patients following a hospitalization.
As a response to these efforts to increase care in the home, health system leaders have set their sights on a number of key investment areas. The survey found that 64% of respondents plan to pool their resources toward home-based chronic care, while 60% are focused on hospital-at-home programs. Additionally, 58% of respondents said they are focused on transitional care.
In order to successfully implement these programs, health system leaders will need to be able to incorporate digital technologies, according to Current Health.
On the flip side, the health systems that have already incorporated remote care technologies to provide care have seen benefits.
Overall, 69% of respondents said they reduced hospital admissions, while 63% said they saw an improvement among their patients. A similar 62% reported patient satisfaction.
In addition to those benefits, remote care technologies have enhanced health systems’ workflows by enabling organizations to provide care that is proactive at scale, according to Current Health. About 66% of respondents said remote care technologies enabled their organizations to provide more preventive clinical care, while 60% said it helped them manage more patients overall.
More than two-thirds said it allowed them to prioritize which patients require clinical attention.
Despite the overall benefits, health systems have faced some roadblocks when it comes to implementing new technology and processes for home-based programs.
The majority of these challenges are related to engagement, operations and data, according to Current Health.
The survey found that 56% of respondents faced challenges around patient adoption and
adherence, with 48% having trouble enrolling patients in the program and 42% seeing challenges around adherence.
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