A brand new survey exhibits that just about two-thirds of executives hardly ever meet to debate residence care and solely 38% say their group is performing “very well” relating to supporting members’ use of residence care companies.

Poor communication and coordination amongst varied stakeholders, delayed companies and decrease member satisfaction are only a few of the challenges going through residence care implementation from well being plans.

The survey, revealed by Integrated Home Care Services (IHCS) and Sage Growth Partners, contains the responses from 47 well being plan leaders. Some of the findings left IHCS leaders puzzled.

“About 72% of respondents say that strategic drivers were a main reason why care is starting to move to the home, yet two-thirds say they rarely meet and discuss this care,” Paul Pino, chief growth and analytics officer at IHCS, instructed Home Health Care News. “These two are almost diametrically opposed to one another. There’s a disconnect there that really has made us scratch our heads.”

Integrated Home Care Services delivers home-based care to over 2.2 million sufferers by partnerships with well being plans and risk-bearing supplier organizations.

The firm is an unbiased residence care advantages administrator that gives a value-based residence care mannequin for managed care organizations.

While Pino is inspired that well being plan executives acknowledge the rising demand for residence care, there’s nonetheless rather a lot to be completed relating to dedicating time and sources to residence care.

Over the previous 5 years, 91% of the well being plan executives within the survey mentioned that residence care service utilization has elevated.

However, a majority (60%) mentioned they help members’ use of residence care “moderately well.”

If these executives know demand is there, it could be a extra related dialog, Pino continued. About the identical variety of executives, almost two-thirds, mentioned they hardly ever discuss residence care.

“You would anticipate that if they rarely meet to talk about it, they probably don’t have an opinion as it relates to home care,” Pino mentioned. “But they know that it’s a problem, it just hasn’t been a focus.”

Pino believes that the COVID-19 pandemic has one thing to do with that. Health plan executives have been so targeted and engaged with among the institutional-based parts of care that home-based care has not been high of thoughts, he mentioned.

Health plan executives even have acknowledged that prices have gone up for residence care: 96% of respondents indicated that residence care prices have elevated over the previous 5 years. Of these, over 25% mentioned prices have elevated greater than 10%.

That development may proceed for the following few years.

“There is an understanding right now within health care that there’s only so much you could squeeze,” Pino mentioned. “You’re not going to get a significant amount of profitability from over-squeezing the lowest cost provider. If you look at any sort of utilization-oriented trend, and you start looking at total cost per patient and when you compare home care to SNF, SNF typically has 200% the level of reimbursement, on an average per patient basis, than home care would.”

Home well being and residential care ought to see slight upticks in prices, Pino mentioned, particularly relating to managed care.

Home care technique and optimization proceed to be hurdles for these executives as effectively. Of the 47 executives surveyed, solely 36% mentioned they’re “very proficient” at assessing residence care’s impression on complete prices.

These outcomes, though shocking in some methods, had been additionally validating for firms like IHCS who might help bridge the hole between well being plans and home-based care.

“The trends that we’re seeing, not only from a utilization perspective but from a cost perspective, continue to rise,” Josh Holmes, senior vice chairman of enterprise growth at IHCS, instructed HHCN. “The opportunity for a home care benefit and administrator to collaborate with these populations, on behalf of a health plan, couldn’t be better.”