Before retiring at the end of year, National Association for Home Care & Hospice (NAHC) President William A. Dombi still has items to check off his to-do list.
On the top of this list is the previously announced NAHC and National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization (NHPCO) merger.
“The biggest thing I’m hoping to accomplish fits in with the whole merger aspect, to have the integration completed, to a point where on January 1, it almost looks like we flipped the switch, and everything of the organization is pretty much in place at that point,” Dombi told Home Health Care News at a press briefing during NAHC’s Financial Management Conference last month.
While Dombi calls the goal ambitious, the organization is also hoping to have a new CEO at the helm of the combined organization by then.
What’s more, Ken Albert – chairperson for the merger transition board – gave an update on the CEO search at the conference last month.
“It’s a big step, we’re recruiting people who have very long tenured careers,” he said. “We’re not just looking in the health care sector. We’re looking in the political realm, and other [areas], but we’re super close right now to a final candidate. I could not be more thrilled with the level of interest we had, and hopefully this will come to fruition by the middle of August.”
Ultimately, Dombi has seen home-based care evolve when he reflects back on his tenure at NAHC.
“I’m pretty proud of the work that I’ve done and the things that I’ve accomplished. Was it everything that I wanted? No,” he said. “But I have seen such a significant growth in health care services at home. No one would be able to take credit for the whole, but to go from where things were, when I first was engaged in this work back in the 70s, to see where we are today.”
Outside of regulatory wins, Dombi also sees the evolution of home-based care through large payers, such as Humana Inc. (NYSE: HUM) and UnitedHealth Group (NYSE: UNH), investing in the space.
“I think you can certainly look at it from a positive perspective, saying, these plans had options to invest in X, Y and Z in health care, and they chose home care and physicians,” he said. “Their forecast says it’s about community-based health care services.”
However, he noted the downsides of payers investing heavily in the space, too.
“You can look at it from the negative and say these guys are going to control authorization of services and payment for services, and look at it from a competitive end and say, ‘Am I going to be on a losing end with that?’” Dombi said.
His personal view falls somewhere down the middle however.
“Medicare Advantage is an extraordinarily serious issue, because they’re getting away with paying less than the cost of care, and the providers feel so frustrated,” he said. “They’re taking it because traditional Medicare is offering a subsidy, but a subsidy that’s likely to be diminished over time. I tried to not just focus on whether it is good or bad that the plans have bought into home care. I can give you goods and bads out of it.”
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