Home Healthcare Providers Share Thoughts on Value-Based Care

Although some home-based care professionals are still unsure about the impact value-based care has had on their organizations, over four in 10 home healthcare providers expect value-based contracts to account for more than half of their future revenue, a report found.

The survey, conducted by Home Health Care News (HHCN) and AlayaCare between March 9 and April 4, 2022, reflects responses from 224 home-based care providers on how value-based care has impacted the home healthcare industry.

More than half of respondents (54 percent) said that value-based contracts accounted for very little of their current revenue, while 12 percent said they accounted for more than half or most of their revenue.

However, that may change in the future, the survey found. Forty-two home-based care professionals projected that more than half or most of their organization’s revenue will be from value-based contracts in the next three to five years. Almost a quarter of respondents (23 percent) reported that value-based contracts would account for roughly half of their future revenue.

Most respondents think that value-based care will have financial and clinical impacts on home healthcare. On a scale of zero to 10, with 10 as the highest, providers said that the financial impact on home healthcare is 6.8 and the clinical impact is 6.6.

According to respondents, the two biggest benefits of value-based care were better client outcomes (63 percent) and increased patient satisfaction (56 percent). Around half of the healthcare professionals (52 percent) cited reduced costs as a value-based care benefit, while 19 percent said improved caregiver satisfaction and 9 percent mentioned fewer care errors.

Home healthcare professionals also shared what they believed are essential practices in a value-based care model. Nearly 70 percent reported that tracking client satisfaction was extremely important, while 61 percent said sharing documents between facilities across the care continuum was extremely important.

Additionally, around half of respondents described tracking readmission rates (55 percent), tracking client goal completion (51 percent), and benchmarking success against competitors (48 percent) as extremely important.

Regarding challenges with reporting on value-based care, most responses centered around data. Home healthcare professionals cited data analysis, data integrity, and gathering data from multiple sources as difficulties. Respondents also found educating staff and clinical staff to be a challenge, the report noted.

Data collection and data sharing are common challenges for healthcare providers when transitioning to value-based care. In particular, inefficient data sharing can lead to delayed feedback from payers, which can create problems for providers, Lynda Rowe, senior advisor of value-based systems at Intersystems, told RevCycleIntelligence in a past interview.

Sixty percent of respondents in the HHCN survey predicted that value-based care would increase merger and acquisition activity.

Recent healthcare mergers and acquisitions have revolved around furthering value-based care.

For example, Fresenius Health Partners, InterWell Health, and Cricket Health entered a definitive agreement in March 2022 to merge and create one company to advance value-based kidney care services.

Additionally, in February 2022, the value-based care platform Signify Health agreed to acquire Caravan Health in an effort to increase participation in value-based payment models.