With widespread reimbursement uncertainty and staffing shortages, home health providers are looking for ways to offer high-quality and more efficient care.
For some operators, this has meant embracing predictive analytics and the powerful tools that have helped revolutionize other industries. Over time, such technology can specifically work wonders in curbing costly hospital readmissions and maximizing clinician capacity, a new study from the post-acute care technology and analytics company WellSky suggests.
To explore the impact of predictive analytics, WellSky took a closer look at home health providers that used its CareInsights solution over a three-year period between 2019 and 2021.
Tim Ashe, chief clinical officer at WellSky, told Home Health Care News that he and his colleagues wanted to see if there was a difference in provider results before and after using the predictive tools — and how those results compared to providers who did not use those same tools.
“We then oriented our analysis to best control for effects of the COVID-19 pandemic for our clients by both looking at each provider’s performance over time, as well as how their performance compared to other home health providers during the same periods,” Ashe explained.
The CareInsights tool collects data on over 7 million home health episodes and provides agencies with predictive measures such as hospitalization risk, care setting suitability and the likelihood of improving daily living activities. The predictions are updated in real-time, even as an agency’s census fluctuates.
The study found that in the 12-month period after using WellSky’s new predictive analytics tools, providers experienced 12% lower risk-adjusted 60-day hospitalization rates and averaged 8% fewer visits per admission year-over-year.
Agencies used less visits and had readmissions 32% lower than those that did not use the analytics, a sign that CareInsights and similar predictive analytic tools could help provide more efficient care.
Users likewise averaged 20% shorter lengths of care to discharge than non-users and from 2019-2020. On top of that, users received 12% fewer Low-Utilization Payment Adjustments (LUPAs) — on average — compared to non-users.
All of that can have significant impacts on providers’ bottom-line financials.
“We were struck by the high correlation between solution usage and more differentiated results,” Ashe said. “We thought we would see a difference, but the magnitude, particularly on both dimensions — increased quality at nearly twice the efficiency — was striking, even given our high expectations. This real-world evidence reinforces our confidence that our predictive analytics solutions, when paired with skilled providers, lead to better outcomes and efficiency.”
In its study, WellSky notes that fewer visits did not result in a reduction in quality.
“It means providers were actually able to improve outcomes through a more efficient use of fewer visits,” the study described. “It also means their capacity is increased so they can take care of more patients at a given staffing level, decreasing the need to reject referrals. And combined with lower re-hospitalization rates, it shifts the cost of care in the right direction.”
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