How Data Can Help Home-Based Care Providers Zero In On Growth Opportunities

Home-based care providers, and others in the post-acute care space, need to start collecting the right kind of data in order to get quality outcomes and reach growth targets.

Being on top of Minimum Data Set (MDS) collection and having accurate and detailed coding can be two of the most important aspects of improving outcomes.

“If your coding is done accurately and correctly — and if you’re able to leverage your MDS — you can start to figure out ways to use that data in meaningful ways,” Pathway Health COO Lisa Thomson, said during a panel at the LeadingAge Illinois conference this week. “That all could help drive some opportunities for competency training, clinical training, programmatic development, strategic positioning and aligning with specific partners to really grow your business and retain staff.”

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Collecting and using data can be an overwhelming process for home-based care providers. That’s especially true when it seems like the rules and regulations change on a yearly basis.

“The demographics are shifting, and continue to shift, for the type of care and services that we provide,” Thompson said. “It’s important for providers to know how we take some key data points and help us use those data points to drive decisions.”

Thompson used the example of providers across the post-acute spectrum understanding what lane they want to operate in.

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Improving quality measures for clinical and chronic diseases is a huge opportunity for providers, Thompson said, and finding a niche within that can be helpful.

Using public data that is now available — due to CMS requiring certain measures to be collected — is one way to find those niches.

“Those chronic diseases are ones that our physician partners, our clinician partners and our acute care partners are being monitored for,” Thompson said. “Who’s the best at chronic disease management in the whole health care sector? We are, as leaders in post-acute care. Chronic diseases are where we have that opportunity.”

By narrowing in on service needs, and using MDS and ICD-10 coding, providers have the ability to build towards a certain focus area.

“Using this data, you can look at trends in your organization and [leverage that against] your marketplace to see what’s the growth potential for Medicare and Medicaid individuals with those disease states that align with the likeness and the demographics of your organization,” Thompson said. “Or you could make changes in your organization to build towards a certain focus.”

Going in blind shouldn’t be an option for providers any more, Thompson said.

“Don’t go out there and just develop programs to develop programs,” she said. “Look at that data to see if you’re going to have that marketplace saturation around you. That’s all now publicly available.”

Having a better grasp on data collection can also be used as a recruitment and retention tool when dealing with staffing shortages.

“Your staff has an opportunity to really engage and be more involved in those decisions,” Thompson said. “That is the number one retention strategy. Everything we hear about is caregivers wanting meaningful work and being engaged and involved.”

With readmission rates holding more weight post-pandemic and value-based models gaining popularity, it’s important for providers to not only understand the importance of data collection but know how to effectively use it.

“We as leaders have to make sure we get the appropriate information and the right information to target our training, our education and where we see opportunities for performance improvement,” Thompson said.

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