Nick Knowlton
Aug 3 2022
Reading Time: 3 minutes
By: Nick Knowlton, Vice President of Business Development, ResMed – SaaS
Home health value-based purchasing (HHVBP) is a shift in the delivery model from fee for service to payment for cost and quality, whereby the providers are paid based on patient health outcomes. As we all know, providers are usually in touch with patients for just a small portion of their care journey, so it’s critical for them to find ways to create better connections with those they serve. Organizations that fail to do this will be financially at risk for the health outcomes of their patient population under the emerging and growing care delivery models.
By prioritizing family engagement, your organization can evolve with this shifting payment model by actively working toward providing more value-based care. Here are three ways providers can level up family engagement to help meet HHVBP requirements.
Family engagement can impact care transitions.
When patients are transitioned from a care setting to the home, having thorough care instructions follow them can make a significant difference for outcomes. Whether it’s medication refills or wound management, families who have up-to-date education on the care of their loved one will feel confident and engaged when clinicians are away from the home.
This is especially true for elderly or incapacitated individuals, who rely on family members as part of the broader care team. Providing families access to care education can be absolutely pivotal in keeping patients from having poor health outcomes.
Family engagement can avoid unnecessary rehospitalization.
Real-time communication with family members can allow care teams to intervene before small problems become potentially urgent issues that require hospitalization. Family engagement adds a safety layer and support network for any questions or concerns between visits. Unnecessary rehospitalization can also result in inferior financial outcomes under HHVBP models, which hurts the provider and other stakeholders in addition to damage to the patient.
Family engagement can differentiate your organization.
Whether it’s managing deliveries or addressing problems with ordering, real-time communication with family members can be a major factor when they decide where to place their loved ones. If families are forced to chase down providers for a medication refill or if they have to go to the physician’s office for a physical signature, they will ultimately choose another provider who can get in front of the problems and engage with them in real time in modern and streamlined modalities.
Organizations that prioritize digital solutions that allow them to better engage patients and their families will likely have more positive experiences with HHVBP models. When done well, it can lead to more patient acquisition, higher retention of those patient populations, and improved financial outcomes for both the provider and the referral source.
In the end, care delivered under HHVBP models has the same priority as your organization—patient outcomes. Schedule a demo today to learn why CitusHealth is built to make family engagement easy so providers can focus on quality patient care.
