The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) proposed home health payment rule, released Wednesday, included significant cuts for the third straight year. Those cuts, among other proposed changes, raise questions over the stability of the industry in the coming years. It has providers asking themselves and others the question: “Why us?” For an industry […]
VitalCaring
As UnitedHealth Group (NYSE: UNH) and Amedisys (Nasdaq: AMED) work on a divestment strategy that will satisfy regulators, a lot hangs in the balance. For one, UnitedHealth Group and Optum’s deal for the home health and hospice provider Amedisys is one of the largest deals in the industry’s history, only trailing Optum’s deal for Amedisys’ […]
In early May, it was reported that UnitedHealth Group (NYSE: UNH) and Amedisys (Nasdaq: AMED) were working on a divestment package to satisfy regulator concerns over antitrust violations. Capitol Forum had previously reported that Amedisys was aiming to offload more than 100 of its locations to a “private equity-backed buyer.” On Friday, Capitol Forum reported […]
The Medicaid Access Rule has been finalized, with six years until the implementation of the 80-20 provision. There’s no time to rest for home-based care providers and advocates on the regulation front, however. Summer is near, and that means so is the home health proposed payment rule from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services […]
Internal and external headwinds have conjoined to curtail dealmaking in home-based care over the last couple of years. Amid those headwinds, however, there are companies like New Day Healthcare and VitalCaring that are banking on big-time growth in 2024 and 2025, largely driven by acquisition. As growing providers, each company has picked up what they […]
Thanks to impactful, large-scale transactions over the last decade, the collective face of home-based care has changed forever. Traditional providers in both home health care and personal home care have merged. Payers became involved in the home-based care space like never before. Of late, retailers have too. But it’s often easy to forget how the […]
Grand opening, grand closing. Hospice providers began to work with Medicare Advantage (MA) via the Value-Based Insurance Design (VBID) demonstration in 2021. At the end of 2024, the “hospice carve-in” model will cease. This will have an impact on home health providers who offer hospice services, obviously. But the failure of hospice’s fit within VBID […]
Artificial intelligence is likely to be a society- and business-altering technological development. But, just like the advent of the internet before it, AI’s emergence will undoubtedly lead to as many empty promises from business leaders as it does actual use cases. That’ll particularly be the case in the early innings of AI, which I believe […]
As home health patients become sicker and more complex, providers have been forced to find ways to keep their care models financially viable. In order to combat some of those “acuity creep” challenges, industry leaders are leaning on technology, data-driven decision making and more value-based care. “We continue to navigate through a very regulated industry,” […]
Home-based care providers have faced many headwinds over the past few years. They’ll continue to do so in 2024. But uncertainty has also plagued providers, and there may be less of that this year. Providers know the threat of fee-for-service Medicare cuts. They know Medicare Advantage (MA) penetration is an unstoppable force. They know staffing […]