The demand for home and community-based care will continue to grow as more and more elderly populations prefer to age at home. The pandemic has accelerated this trend. Even with the growth, home healthcare providers will continue to face significant headwinds in 2023.
The labor shortage will continue to be a significant challenge in 2023. In addition to labor shortage, wage growth and inflation will pose additional challenges for home care agencies. Reimbursement cuts and other regulatory requirements will also pressure agencies bottom line.
Home-based care will continue to evolve in the breadth and complexity of services. Expanding services to include Outpatient Therapy at Home, Home Based Mental Health, and other higher acuity services will help home care agencies to attract new referrals and counter some of the cost pressures.
Even though home healthcare agencies face many challenges, there are also many upsides. Despite all the challenges facing the home healthcare industry, it will continue to grow and play an integral part in providing care at home. Integrated Home Care Software platform with the right technology will play a significant role in helping home agencies meet these challenges and continue to grow.
In this blog, we discuss how some of these trends are shaping the direction of the home healthcare industry.
Trend #1 Labor Shortages
The labor shortage will be a permanent challenge in healthcare, exacerbated by the pandemic. Many healthcare workers have moved on to other careers creating ongoing and permanent difficulties for home care agencies. Demand for healthcare services is growing much faster than the availability of caregivers (Source : Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Home care agencies should leverage technology to reimagine how employees work and deliver care to improve the staff's productivity. Automating many repetitive tasks to free up time for employees will help agencies to improve employee satisfaction and quality of care. Agencies should develop training programs to enhance employees' skills in technology and process changes.
Technology can never replace human interaction in the process of delivering care. It can only supplement care providers to free up their time so that they can do what they enjoy doing – providing care. Home care agencies should invest in the right home care software platform and staff to meet the challenges posed by the labor shortage.
Read other articles:
Revenue Cycle Management for Home Care Agencies - Addressing Staffing Challenges - Part 1
Clinical Documentation for Home Health Care Agencies – Addressing Staffing Challenges - Part 3
Trend#2 Regulatory and Reimbursement Challenges
Home Health agencies will continue to face reductions in reimbursement while having to do more to meet additional regulatory requirements.
CMS announced a rate reduction of 3.925% for 2023 for Medicare Certified Home Health agencies (Source: CMS Press Release). Even though it is only half of the proposed rate reduction, CMS left the possibility of implementing the other half of the decrease in the future. CMS also revised the net inflation adjustment to 4.0%. Even with the inflation update, the reimbursement rate will remain flat, leaving Home Health Agencies to deal with inflation in wage and operating expenses with no actual increase in reimbursement.
CMS will implement OASIS-E changes in 2023 and expand Home Health Value Based Purchasing Model (HHVBP) nationwide. Home Health Agencies will have to review the current training and process and adjust them to deal with these changes.
CMS has proposed to require home health agencies to collect and report OASIS data on non-Medicare and non-Medicaid patients for the CY 2025. Home Care Agencies that do not collect OASIS data now should prepare to collect OASIS data in 2025.
Electronic Visit Verification (EVV) requirements for skilled home care services starting in 2023 will also add additional operational challenges to home care agencies.
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Trend #3 Expanded Home Based Services
The continued growth of the aging population, along with the pandemic, has driven the increase in demand for home-based services. With the increasing shift to value-based care, large MCOs and MA plan will push to expand the services provided by home care agencies beyond the traditional services to higher acuity services. Physicians are more comfortable prescribing mental health, therapy, and other higher-skilled services, such as respiratory care, wound care, cardiological conditions, and orthopedics, to patients at home.
New delivery models such as SNF at Home and Hospital at Home are coming into play. Acute care and skilled nursing facilities are looking to partner with home health care agencies to transition more care to patients' homes.
Home healthcare agencies should look at these opportunities to expand service offerings to offset the challenges posed by rate reductions and regulatory challenges.
Trend #4 Continued Growth for Home-Based Services
Demand for Home-Based Services will continue to grow due to the retirement of the baby boomers. Industry watchers expect the elderly population to cross 80 million in 2050. The sharp increase in the elderly population from 35 million in 2000 to over 80 million in 2050 also means that the number of caregivers per elderly could drop dramatically if the current work and retirement patterns do not change. (Source: The 2030 Problem: Caring for Aging Baby Boomers).
U.S Home Health Care is projected to grow from $94.17 billion in 2022 to $153.19 billion by 2029 (Source: Fortune Business Insights).
Continued growth in demand for home-based services and labor shortages will pose enormous challenges for home-based service providers in the future. Home Care Agencies should be prepared to invest in their employees and the right home care software platform to meet these challenges and take advantage of the opportunities.
Trend #5 Leverage Technology
Home Health Care Agencies should leverage technology to meet the growing demand for home-based services and the challenges posed by the continued labor shortage, the need to offer additional services, regulatory changes, and cost pressures affecting the bottom line.
An integrated home care software platform for all home-based services will eliminate redundant data entry and improve ease of use for employees.
Intelligent automation to automate many repetitive and time-consuming tasks will help agencies to do more with less. Automation should be part of the EMR software platform rather than using a different platform or partner for automation.
Home care agencies should look for technology platforms that will proactively push exceptions to employees and caregivers, making it easy to manage by exception.
Integrated, effective, and efficient communication will be crucial in improving the quality of care and outcomes.
Home Health Care Agencies should leverage technology to improve operational efficiency and the agency's bottom line.
Conclusion
Despite reimbursement cuts, labor shortages, and inflation, the future of home based services remains bright despite the challenges posed by reimbursement cuts. Home Health Care agencies investing in people and technology will grow and thrive in the future.
About CareVoyant
CareVoyant is a leading provider of cloud-based integrated enterprise-scale home health care software that can support all home-based services under ONE Software, ONE Patient, and ONE Employee, making it a Single System of Record. We support all home based services, including Home Care, Private Duty Nursing, Private Duty Non-Medical, Home and Community Based Services (HCBS), Home Health, Pediatric Home Care, and Outpatient Therapy at Home.
CareVoyant functions – Intake, Authorization Management, Scheduling, Clinical with Mobile options, eMAR/eTAR, Electronic Visit Verification (EVV), Billing/AR, Secure Messaging, Notification, Reporting, and Dashboards – streamline workflow, meet regulatory requirements, improve quality of care, optimize reimbursement, improve operational efficiency and agency bottom line.
For more information, please visit CareVoyant.com or call us at 1-888-463-6797.
