How MA Plans Can Build on COVID-19 Home Healthcare Strategies

Bundle services to support member engagement

The coronavirus pandemic pushed forward the rapid development and adoption of home healthcare strategies.

“What COVID may have done is accelerate everyone's thinking about: how do you provide that optimal set of services in the home?” explained Joe Agostini, MD, chief medical officer at UnitedHealthcare Retiree Solutions, explained to HealthPayerIntelligence. “We on the health plan side are thinking about moving more quickly and aggressively in terms of supporting those older adults in their own home. So, it has given us an opportunity to move faster on many of the ideas that we've been thinking about in recent years.”

As part of delivering these services more quickly and efficiently to members, UnitedHealthcare bundled certain home healthcare services.

The payer recently announced its new post-discharge home healthcare program, Healthy at Home, which offers a couple of key social determinants of health services as part of its home healthcare approach.

This bundled home healthcare services strategy can improve member engagement.

“Putting sets of services together makes it easier for retirees to reach out to us for assistance and for them to engage when we call them,” said Agostini.

The UnitedHealthcare team designed this program to provide three key social determinants of health services: transportation, meal delivery, and in-home personal care. However, Agostini noted that there is always an opportunity to expand on these offerings.

In the future, the payer may add prescription delivery and house call services to its bundle. For now, the Healthy at Home program coexists with other UnitedHealthcare solutions for seniors.

“Post-COVID, we're going to work through how to keep this evolving,” Condon shared. "The secret is just to engage the retiree in this case, and make sure we can meet them where they are and provide the services they need. That's an evolution and I think it'll happen across the board and we're part of that process.”

Lean into remote patient monitoring tech

The coronavirus pandemic forced the healthcare industry to leverage technologies in new ways to reach patients in their home and track their health outcomes. 

The telehealth boom challenged many underlying assumptions about seniors ability to adjust to new technologies: around three-quarters of seniors who used telehealth during the pandemic said that they would do so again and 90 percent reported positive experiences.

Moving forward, remote patient monitoring technologies will continue to play a significant role in advancing home healthcare services.

“In addition to this Healthy at Home program, we've also been offering more digital support tools and remote patient monitoring for older adults because they're more likely over time to engage in those new technologies,” Agostini explained. 

In particular, remote patient monitoring has been key to preventing hospital readmissions by alerting payers and providers to potential risks, even before the patient is aware that she could experience an adverse health event.

“Our strategic plan is to focus on people who are at very high risk for hospitalization or have a very high risk chronic condition,” said Agostini. 

“If we give them additional tools in their own homes to monitor their own health, to monitor their own vital signs, we may be able to detect much sooner whether they're going into decline or may be at risk for going into the hospital. These tools can assist both patients and providers in intervening early to help people maintain health and avoid hospitalizations."

UnitedHealthcare’s remote patient monitoring technology strategy goes hand-in-hand with its home healthcare program to bolster patient experiences and patient outcomes at home.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the interest and acceptance of health care technologies and as a Medicare Advantage plan we have the opportunity to connect people to services that allow them to get the right level of care at the right time and in the right place,” Agostini added.

“Having flexibility to support care at home when it is safe and effective is important. Effective home care can address a person’s needs and support the caregiver to help people remain independent in their preferred setting.”