Signify Health Inc. (NYSE: SGFY) kicked off 2021 by going public. Since then, the company has only leaned into its commitment to activate the home as a key part of the care continuum.
“It’s been a fun couple of quarters so far, being a newly public company,” Peter Boumenot, chief product officer of Signify, said during a fireside chat at Home Health Care News’ FUTURE conference. “We’ve had to start running faster in the move to value-based care, and going public has really allowed us to invest more back into our business and invest more back into the services that we’re providing to our customers.”
Dallas-based Signify is a tech-enabled value-based care platform. The company partners with both health plans and health systems to deliver various types of care to patients in their homes.
Currently, Signify has partnerships with roughly 2,500 post-acute facilities.
In the wake of becoming a publicly traded company, Signify has launched a number of new services. It has likewise expanded on some of its current offerings for its plan and provider customers.
This has fueled the company’s growth, according to Boumenot.
“Over the course of the last 12 months, we’ve continued to bring in more and more advanced diagnostic and preventative services alongside our in-home health evaluations,” he said. “I think that has been really effective for us, as well as for our customers and their members. We’ve begun to do more work there in terms of not only identifying care and quality gaps, but then subsequently using our services to close them on behalf of the health plan.”
In July, for example, Signify launched its Transition to Home program. The program acts as an extension of the work hospitals, health systems, clinically integrated networks and accountable care organizations (ACOs) are doing in terms of transitioning individuals back into the home.
“We know that in an episode of care model, about 45% of the readmissions occur after 30 days,” Boumenot said.
Avoidable hospital readmissions cost Medicare roughly $17 billion annually, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).
Broadly, the Transition to Home program is focused on that 30 to 90-day window of time.
“We are working with leading health systems in the transition to value,” Boumenot said. “We’re the largest convener underneath the CMMI program, but bundled payments for care innovation. We’re working with skilled nursing facilities and in-patient rehab facilities to determine the appropriate length of stay, as well as the next set of care. We’ve then continued that in the transition to home.”
Boumenot noted that Signify works to make sure individuals understand their discharge plan and the appropriate next steps. This also involves following up from a clinical and social perspective.
In fact, the program begins with one of Signify’s social care coordinators, reaching out on behalf of the health system and working through some of the social barriers that may exist in terms of an individual transitioning back to the home.
“After that acute event, the mindset of an individual is scattered,” Boumenot said. “We find that by starting on the social side of things, we’re actually able to build more trust and deliver better outcomes when we bring in or have an escalated pathway from a clinical or pharmacy perspective. But it’s really getting that baseline down for us.”
Overall, Signify hasn’t been shy about its mission to position the home as a major part of the care continuum.
For Boumenot, the company’s mission is most clear when entering the home with providers.
“We hear constantly from feedback from members, as well as their children, that this is the only time they get 55 to 60 minutes of facetime with a physician, who is talking about their chronic conditions, their medications, observing the home environment for things like fall risk, as well as discussing any needs they may have around transportation,” he said.
Boumenot believes that this is reflective of how Signify thinks about the home as an “anchor point” to ensure its looking at patients holistically.
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