This article is sponsored by CareScout Services. In this Voices Interview, Home Health Care News sits down with Philip Gillich, MPH, VP of Provider Network at CareScout, to talk about the change his organization is bringing to long-term care. He discusses some of the key components of operating the CareScout Quality Network, which is based on person-centered care, and he explains how home-based care providers are responding to joining the network
Home Health Care News: Tell us about CareScout, and what’s in store for the future.
Philip Gillich: CareScout was established with the mission to transform the way individuals seeking long-term care find and select services, ensuring they feel confident in their choices. Our goal is to simplify and dignify the aging experience.
As a wholly owned subsidiary of Genworth Financial, Inc and affiliated with Genworth Life Insurance Company (“Genworth”), the nation’s largest long-term care insurer, we’re in the process of constructing the CareScout Quality Network. This initiative aims to provide Genworth’s policyholders, and soon others, a consolidated experience to simplify their search for top-tier care. This is especially beneficial for those overwhelmed by our country’s intricate long-term care system.
Central to our ethos is the advocacy for person-centered care. We view it as a pioneering standard for long-term care across all domains, including home care. While it’s not the sole benchmark for excellence, it’s a significant indicator, emphasizing life quality to enhance results. Person-centered care extends beyond ensuring safety. It encompasses an individual’s aspirations, values and objectives in the care provided. The approach holistically addresses physical, mental, spiritual and social facets of health, fostering comprehensive wellness.
Prioritizing patient-specific concerns is vital as we progress towards embracing person-centered care wholly. Currently, we’re welcoming providers who resonate with our person-centered standard for long-term care to become part of the CareScout Quality Network. We’ve initiated the network in Texas, but our vision extends beyond state lines. We aspire to provide this service nationally and extend it to other long-term care insurance carriers and their clientele. The future holds immense promise, and we’re eager to navigate it.
What career experiences do you most draw from in your role today?
My extensive background in population health, value-based care, and provider-payor partnerships greatly informs my current role at CareScout, where I’m dedicated to enhancing the experience for all participants in long-term care.
My professional journey began in hospital administration, initially at a community health center in New Jersey, followed by a tenure at Mount Sinai Beth Israel, a significant teaching hospital in Manhattan with 799 beds. My academic pursuit of a Master’s in Public Health Administration pivoted my career towards negotiations and provider network management within health plans.
Having witnessed health care from these diverse angles, I’ve gained a holistic perspective. This broad view seamlessly transitioned me into positions focusing on population health and pioneering initiatives at several startups. Now, at CareScout, these experiences coalesce. I’m using survey tools to ensure every opinion is valued, from care seekers to the dedicated staff.
How do you identify providers that are a good fit to participate in a network based on person-centered care?
CareScout partners with providers dedicated to person-centered care that agree to go through our comprehensive credentialing and vetting procedures. It’s critical to emphasize to these providers that their unwavering commitment to person-centered care is an intrinsic principle and our network’s foundation. Providers cultivating an atmosphere anchored in respecting patients’ beliefs and values, and urging their teams to be compassionate and attentive, resonate deeply with our mission. Together with our network providers, CareScout aims to elevate care quality standards in groundbreaking ways. Additionally, our Network providers extend special pricing to CareScout’s members.
After integrating into our Quality Network and establishing themselves as CareScout’s participating providers, we administer surveys to their clients and staff biannually. This process ensures an objective evaluation of the provider’s commitment to a person-centered care environment.
What has been the response from home care providers you’ve talked to about joining the network?
The response has been overwhelmingly positive. Home care providers we’ve engaged with recognize the dual benefit of aligning with CareScout — the emphasis on person-centered quality care and the potential reach to Genworth’s vast base of one million policyholders, not to mention the prospective access to other insurers’ long-term care clientele. They are excited about collaborating with us, leveraging our resources to evaluate and enhance their commitment to person-centered care. Historically, home care providers have often been sidelined in the standard-setting discourse. The CareScout Quality Network presents them with an avenue to assess, refine and validate their care quality, simultaneously amplifying their presence to those seeking care.
What’s your hope for the change CareScout will bring to long-term care?
We hope to not only provide older adults with a simplified and dignified aging experience, but to encourage the industry as a whole to reach toward person-centered care as a standard of quality. The majority of care seekers and their families find our nation’s long-term care system hard to navigate, even frightening. CareScout offers support to family, friends, and neighbors of the older adult, guiding them through the long-term care system and connecting them when appropriate with quality providers of in-home care services. With a safe plan for home care that also addresses quality of life, older adults have the opportunity to age in place with dignity, and often at lower cost than facility-based care.
In a couple of words, finish this sentence: “In 2023, the home-based care industry is being defined by…?”
… the central role it can play in the future of long-term care. There’s a great yearning out there for more aging in place, and that means more care in the home and higher expectations for that care. It all calls for a movement to redesign the way long-term care is not only delivered but measured. Home care is essential to that movement. It’s where most care will one day be.
Editor’s Note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
CareScout is reimagining the aging experience. We’re working toward a big goal: a single unified experience where people who need care—along with their families and caretakers—will navigate a more dignified, connected, and fulfilling aging journey. To reach this goal, we are partnering with long-term care providers who are dedicated to high-quality, person-centered care. To learn more, visit CareScout.com
The Voices Series is a sponsored content program featuring leading executives discussing trends, topics and more shaping their industry in a question-and-answer format. For more information on Voices, please contact [email protected].
