Hospice and home health provider LHC Group (NASDAQ: LHCG) is partnering with acute unscheduled care company SCP Health to develop skilled nursing and hospital services in the home setting.
The two companies plan to leverage their existing hospital and Accountable Care Organization (ACO) relationships to build out their SNF- and hospital-at-home services. LHC Group is involved in equity joint ventures with 435 hospitals nationwide. The company receives patient referrals from more than 3,600 hospitals and 64,000 unique physicians in 35 states and the District of Columbia.
“An increasing number of our hospital partners are asking us to stand up SNF and hospital-at-home programs. This is a natural progression of our SNF at home model we began to deploy in 2014, and an excellent opportunity for our Home Care Innovations segment to take center stage in the ongoing transition to value-based care,” said LHC Group Chairman and CEO Keith Myers. “The time is right to leverage our direct experience of providing high acuity care in the home to better execute value-based programs on behalf of our hospital partners and payors.”
The COVID-19 pandemic has created an opening in the market for high-acuity care delivered in the home. More health services gravitated towards the home setting during the outbreak, due to concerns about spreading the virus or losing access to loved ones due to facilities’ visitor restrictions.
LHC Group has developed a care model that can be customized to meet the needs of each hospital rather than taking a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach, the company indicated in a statement. These programs will be designs to fill common gaps that hospitals often encounter when seeking to extend care into the home with clinicians available 24 hours per day.
The Hospital-at-Home and SNF-at-Home models are oriented around patients with complex care needs, often requiring multiple nursing visits in a single day as well as daily physician engagement.
Hospital clinicians communicate and share information with nurses in the home through clinical technology and analytics.This aspect will launch first in the 70 hospitals in which the LHC and SCP footprints already overlap.
SCP Health’s operations range across 30 states. The company holds contracts with 7,500 physicians in 400 health care facilities. SCP Health’s emergency department physicians and hospitalists are deployed in 179 hospitals in markets in which LHC Group has a joint venture partner or has a home health location.
“Both organizations are recognized industry leaders with broad health care experience, innovative solutions, and a shared focus on working with health system partners to solve for local, regional, and national health care challenges,” said Rich D’Amaro, CEO, SCP Health. “Together we will improve efficiency, manage patient conditions, and achieve the best possible health outcomes for patients in the most cost-effective setting – their homes.”
LHC Group first pioneered a SNF-at-Home program in 2014 through its joint venture with Ochsner Health System, specifically a customized orthopedic care program. During the first year of that partnership, the company saw skilled nursing facility admissions fall to 18%, down from 28%. By year two, that number had dropped to 11%, according to documents an LHC Group spokesperson shared with Hospice News. The program generated substantial cost savings, LHC Group indicated.
Payment for these home-based high-acuity services with come through value-based arrangements with health systems, Medicare and ACOs.
“With the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (CMS) recent recommendation to expand its value-based purchasing program nationwide, there will be a premium placed on companies that can quickly take on risk and deliver proven value on a national scale,” an LHC spokesperson indicated.
Value-based care model demonstrations are developed and managed by the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation (CMMI). Recently appointed CMMI director Liz Fowler recently said that the Biden administration is “100% committed” to expanding value-based payment programs. Fowler made her remarks at the National Association of Accountable Care Organization’s virtual conference.
LHC Group is not alone. Other health care companies are working to leverage the rising demand for home-based care. Last week, LHC Group competitor Amedisys, Inc., (NASDQ: AMED) acquired Contessa Health in an effort to build out its own hospital-at-home and SNF-at-Home program in a $250 million deal.
“If this public health emergency has taught us anything, it is that we must all embrace innovative models that allow patients to receive quality care – including more advanced care – at home,” said Myers. “With SCP Health’s proven track record for deploying successful models of care to improve patient health and efficiencies, they are an ideal partner for this expansion of our existing SNF at home and hospital-at-home capabilities.”
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