Alivia Care has launched Alivia Care @ Home, an initiative aimed at reaching patients earlier. CEO Susan Ponder-Stansel described Alivia Care @ Home as an additional support choice.
“We’re in the Medicare-certified home health business, and we’re in the private-duty business, and we’ve had palliative care for a very long time,” she told Home Health Care News. “But what we’ve been working on at Alivia is a more comprehensive solution.”
Jacksonville, Florida-based Alivia Care provides home health care, hospice care, personal care, palliative care, advanced care planning and Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE) services across Northern Florida and Southern Georgia.
At Alivia Care @ Home, a more comprehensive solution means patients having the opportunity to take part in a goals of care discussion, while simultaneously receiving care.
“We really wanted to develop something where we could begin to assess, while delivering excellent home health care, if it’s time to perhaps do a goals of care discussion, and bring in our palliative team,” Ponder-Stansel said. “Whether or not the person ever wants hospice, or needs anything more from palliative care, it’s an opportunity to hear more about the stage of their illness, ask some questions and get some good information.”
The main impetus behind the program was the company’s discovery that roughly 55% of patients who are receiving Medicare-certified home health are also going to be hospice appropriate within a year, according to Ponder-Stansel.
The idea behind Alivia Care @ Home is that there is no wrong door for patients to enter.
“We may interact with them at different stages of their illness, or in different ways,” Ponder-Stansel said. “Each service stands on its own, but then for patients who really need more of a progressive system, more help, they can be put together in a way that meets the patient’s needs differently, than just say, episodic care for home health, which we do too. This is just a novel way to put them together in a manner that follows the patient and really meets a gap in care right now.”
Currently, each service has its own revenue stream, but Ponder-Stansel says that Alivia Care @ Home was designed with future value-based care goals in mind.
“If we’re in that space, where we’re working with an existing ACO to help take over the management of their high needs patients — because that’s something that a lot of the general track, REACH ACOs struggle with — then this is the exact kind of solution that would be able to not only get excellent outcomes for the patient, but also help you with any-value based or risk-based reimbursement,” she said. “Because you’re avoiding events and costs that really don’t improve the patient outcomes through this care navigation.”
Ultimately, Ponder-Stansel believes that there’s an opportunity for home health providers, that also have hospice under their belt, to train their home health staff on what progressive illness looks like.
“I think all of us along the continuum are focused very much on preventing readmissions, and really helping patients not have to go back to the hospital,” she said. “If we’re just doing episodic care, and just thinking transactionally, we may miss the fact that somebody we’re caring for is at the stage where they do need some help understanding they have another choice, and how to find that resource. I just think it’s a great opportunity for some great training.”
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