Home health providers, health systems and large health care-focused retailers are moving away from being one-dimensional companies. With home-based care as the starting point, many of these organizations are embracing 360-degree home-based care delivery models.
One company that exemplifies this is the home-based care provider Amedisys Inc. (Nasdaq: AMED).
The Baton Rouge, Louisiana-based company delivers home health and hospice services, but in recent years it’s moved into higher-acuity care through its acquisition of Contessa Health, an at-home high-acuity care enabler.
The need to expand Amedisys’ capabilities past traditional home health and hospice services was one of the driving factors behind that acquisition, according to Nick Muscato, chief strategy officer at Amedisys.
“We knew that, from a continuum of care perspective, we needed to be able to do more, for not only our referral sources, but also for our patients,” he said last week during a panel discussion at Home Health Care News’ FUTURE conference in Nashville. “Seeing the prevalence of Medicare Advantage penetration and where the growth was coming from, and recognizing that our payer partners were interested in more than just an individual home health episode, or an individual home health visit. In most cases, we were always looking for assets that kind of fit the profile of doing tangential work inside the home.”
Muscato noted that Amedisys’ continuum of services has been “significantly enhanced” since its purchase of Contessa.
“Part of the business model that we probably undersell, publicly, is Contessa’s ability to coordinate care services across a broader continuum than even what Amedisys does,” he said.
In June, UnitedHealth Group’s (NYSE: UNH) Optum, announced its plans to acquire Amedisys. While it’s too soon to know what the combined company could look like, the move may open the door for even further expansion in this area.
Similar to UnitedHealth Group, Walgreens Boots Alliance (Nasdaq: WBA) is another massive health care company that has really embraced home-based care over the last few years.
Above all, the retail giant is looking to create an ecosystem that complements its existing retail pharmacy footprint across the U.S. Home-based care is a key factor in this larger strategic direction.
To this end, the company’s first notable investment was in VillageMD – a home-focused primary care provider – in 2020.
“[It was about] really helping Walgreens go beyond simply saying, ‘Hey, we dispense scripts, we sell bubble gum,’ but actually now we’re partnered at the hip with a national primary care group,” Dr. Harry S. Saag, national medical director of virtual care at Walgreens Health, said during the discussion. “What’s interesting about VillageMD is that it also gets us in the home space through their Village Medical at Home, home-based primary care group.”
Another move Walgreens made was purchasing health-at-home solutions company CareCentrix in 2022. Since then, former CareCentrix CEO John Driscoll has become executive vice president and president of U.S. Healthcare at Walgreens – its fastest-growing segment.
Walgreens CEO Roz Brewer stepped down last week, and the company wants its next leader to have “deep health care experience.”
“What you’re seeing Walgreens do is make these investments and make this commitment, knowing that we already have a great community footprint, but it can’t be good enough to just have 9,000 retail locations, we’ve got to move into the medical space,” Saag said. “We’re doing that through VillageMD. And we’ve got to get into the home, and we’re doing that through a combination of VillageMD and CareCentrix.”
Ahead of the curve
When it comes to health systems, Intermountain Health is ahead of the curve in terms of implementing a 360-degree home-based care delivery model.
Intermountain has a number of care-at-home programs under its roof, including home health care, primary care, hospital-at-home and more.
Breaking down silos is top of mind for the health system, according to Dr. Nathan Starr, who serves as the medical director of home services for Intermountain.
“Each episode of care is completely siloed, for the most part,” he said during the discussion. “You go to the hospital, and you get taken care of there and then transitioned back. Even though it’s all one organization, the care is very discrete. Those are the barriers that we’re really interested in breaking down. What we have found is that by moving into the home, and using that truly as the basis of care and health, that’s where we can start to break through that for our high-risk patients.”
Starr pointed out numerous factors that drive health outcomes that clinicians can’t see in the clinic or a hospital.
“It’s no surprise that the patient is not succeeding, and failing, without identifying and fixing those factors,” he said.
For Walgreens, breaking down coordination barriers is also a pain point that it has set its sights on addressing.
“We’ve started embedding clinical pharmacists directly into VillageMD practices, and it’s taken a lot of work, even though we’re all kind of on the same team,” Saag said. “It takes work to get the tech, the data, the clinical workflows, but it’s still a relationships business at the end of the day.”
The move has garnered positive results for the company. Saag noted that Walgreens is seeing a nearly 40% reduction in readmissions.
Moving forward, care coordination will continue to be a top priority at Walgreens.
“We’ve got to coordinate that care because, ultimately, the patient and their families, they don’t really care about the behind the scenes,” Saag said. “They just want to make sure that everybody’s speaking the same language — that the right hand knows what the left hand is doing.”
Companies featured in this article:
