How Home-Based Care Providers Can Prove Their Worth to Payers

Home-based care is going to be a larger part of health care’s future. As a result, it’s beginning to attract considerable attention from entrepreneurs and other innovators. But as new trends arise with the shift toward the home, including new technology, partnership opportunities and payment models, it’ll be up to each provider to decide whether or not it’s worth it to explore them.

“There are a lot of emerging trends right now,” Joseph Brence, the head of home and community care strategy and solutions at MedBridge, said recently at the National Association for Home Care & Hospice (NAHC) Financial Management Conference.

The Seattle-based MedBridge develops evidence-based solutions for health care organizations and professionals that are using or trying to use innovative technology, among other things. Brence is also an adjunct professor of health administration at New York University. Generally, there are many stages to innovation adoption: There are the first group of adopters, then early adopters, the early majority, the late majority and laggards. It’s likely that home health providers will fall into the same categories. For instance, there are the innovators, such as MaineHealth Care at Home, which has been doing telehealth visits since the turn of the century.