At a time when more home-based care entities are looking for ways to stand out and take their business to the next level, Alivia Care Inc. CEO Susan Ponder-Stansel wants to offer more than what she considers the “meat and potatoes” of home health services.
For Alivia Care — a company that entered the home health market with the acquisition of Better Life Home Health in 2021 — this means services that are a major differentiator when it comes to health outcomes.
The company is always looking to enhance its service lines, whether through acquisition or collaboration with other organizations.
“We always ask ourselves, do we build it, do we buy it, or do we partner for it?” Ponder-Stansel told Home Health Care News. “We’re toying with the idea of a [home-based] primary care practice. Maybe we’d partner for that.”
Alivia Care is a provider of home health, hospice, palliative care and Programs of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE) services. The company operates across 32 counties in North Florida and Southeast Georgia.
Already a player in the hospice space, the company entered the home health market in order to reach patients earlier, and, in turn, to address care gaps.
“We wanted to have another way to serve patients who were not taken under hospice care, either because they weren’t medically eligible, or ready to elect hospice,” Ponder-Stansel said. “We knew if they went away to another home health provider, the odds were, we’d never see them again, or we’d see them 72 hours before they died. We wanted to develop that other hand.”
Having a home health service line under Alivia Care’s umbrella also allows the company to diversify its revenue, according to Ponder-Stansel.
“With some of the things I see coming to hospice, I knew that putting all of our eggs primarily in the hospice basket was not a wise thing for the corporation,” she said.
Despite home health’s ability to tie together many of the company’s post-acute care services, Ponder-Stansel is the first to admit that there’s been a learning curve.
“It has been completely humbling to find out what you don’t know about things,” she said. “Even when you hire consultants and experts, what we didn’t know could fill an ocean. The good news is I’ve never been afraid to jump off the side of the swimming pool, into the deep end. We just learned.”
One of these lessons learned has to do with hiring home health leadership at the company.
Ponder-Stansel discovered that candidates coming from the larger entities aren’t automatically always the best fit for Alivia Care’s needs as an organization.
“A lot of times, people who came from those big corporate environments aren’t always the best fit in an agency where you really have to be a generalist,” she said.
Another lesson the company is learning has to do with navigating the difficulties of the fee-for-service business and competing with national players that are already operating in the space.
For Alivia Care, working with hospital discharge planners and physicians has been the key to getting ahead.
Aside from what’s already on Alivia Care’s plate, the company is also — as Ponder-Stansel puts it — stealing a page from the LHC Group Inc. (Nasdaq: LHCG) playbook and exploring the possibilities of future joint venture partnerships with hospitals.
Alivia Care is also looking to engage in direct contracting with the federal government through the ACO REACH Model.
“Our biggest strategic goal is moving into that risk-based environment, in a way that delivers very good outcomes and can really care for specific populations,” Ponder-Stansel said. “We are looking at serious illness management programs that really would have value to a payer, whether it’s a hospital that’s at risk or whether it’s a primary care practice that’s at risk. From a directional standpoint, everything we’re doing is trying to get us there.”
Ultimately, Ponder-Stansel believes companies that have the ability to deliver a number of different care services can help people move through their illnesses.
“Right now, our payment system treats each thing as an event, and it’s really a process,” she said. “Directionally, we wanted to bring these things under one arm so that we can be prepared in the new risk-based environment, and also create exceptional value for not just the patient, but also those who are paying for the care.”
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