Accountable care organizations (ACOs) are designed to save money by fostering cooperation: By working together, providers across the health care continuum can hopefully save Medicare money and boost quality. But the largest share of the savings may simply come from shifting patients out of skilled nursing and home health settings, a new study suggests—and not […]
Millennials are breathing new life into the nursing industry even as baby boomers are retiring en masse. But home health care providers shouldn’t feel total relief over the influx of younger nurses, as the demand continues to tick upward. An average millennial is now 186% more likely to become a registered nurse (RN) than the average baby […]
Home health care providers and hospitals are increasingly sharing a common investor—and the trend is raising questions about competition, care coordination and anti-trust regulations, according to a recent paper by Harvard University researchers. The percentage of acute care hospitals having common investor ties to post-acute or hospice sectors increased from 24.6% in 2005 to 48.9% in […]
More hospice patients are being discharged before their death, raising a question about whether hospice companies are financially motivated to do so. One recent study found there is in fact a positive association between higher hospice margins and higher rates of live discharge. Over the last decade, the “live discharge” rate—the rate at which patients are discharged […]
Parts of the United States with high medical service costs would do well to embrace more hospice care. In fact, incentivizing hospice care in these regions may lower total health care costs nationwide, according to a study recently published in Health Affairs. For the study, Shiyi Wang of the Yale University School of Public Health and […]
The end-of-life care business is changing, and for large multi-agency, multi-state hospice chains, that means business is booming. In fact, chains cared for nearly half of all hospice patients in 2011, a dramatic increase from a decade prior when small, mostly nonprofit, organizations provided 75% of all care, according to a recent Forbes article, which […]
Transitional care interventions, which aim to improve care transitions from hospital to home, help reduce hospital readmissions 31 to 365 days after discharge, a study in Health Affairs’ latest issue shows. But the study’s authors found that only high-intensity interventions — including the need for home care visits — seemed to be effective in reducing […]
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