CMS proposed a permanent prospective adjustment to the CY 2025 home health payment rate of -4.067% back in June. All in all, the agency proposed a 1.7% cut to aggregate home health payments next year.

Providers have experienced cuts in the previous two years, but have also seen CMS back off more severe cuts in the time between the proposed and final payment rules in 2022 and 2023.

“[CMS] thinks, ‘How much can we threaten to reduce the current payment rate, so that when we drop a few breadcrumbs [in the final rule], providers will feel good about picking a little something up?” Pinnacle Home Care CEO Shane Donaldson said on stage at Home Health Care News’ FUTURE conference last month. “History tells us that the final rule will probably be a net neutral event.”

Based in Oldsmar, Florida, Pinnacle Home Care is one of the largest home health providers operating in its home state. The New York-based HCS-Girling recently acquired Pinnacle Home Care, which plans to significantly expand in the coming years.

While providers are hoping that they at least see those breadcrumbs in the final rule, they’re not banking on it.

Instead, they’re working toward becoming sustainable shops in spite of a turbulent payment environment.

“If you’re not really good at something – whether that is collecting your AR, doing your coding, OASIS review – it’s time to look at people who are really good at that, and maybe make some different decisions,” Interim HealthCare President and COO Rexanne Domico also said on stage at FUTURE. “What I would really suggest to people at this stage in the game is to think about your efficiency in all of your locations.”

Based in Sunrise, Florida, Interim HealthCare is a home health and home care franchise with more than 330 locations across the U.S.

Efficiency is a broad term, but Domico was specifically referring to outsourcing certain tasks, reducing redundancies and also exploring home health-applicable AI.

AI was a major talking point at FUTURE, and the vast majority of providers were bullish on what new technology could do for the industry in terms of efficiency, especially in light of recent rate cuts.

On top of that, Domico mentioned utilization as an area for providers to keep an eye on.

“I think there’s a lot of times we don’t focus on utilization,” Domico continued. “And I think there’s a tremendous opportunity to focus on there. And that can be part of your increase, if you work it the right way.”

Donaldson added that clinicians should be working at the top of their licenses, which also helps drive efficiency.

“What we’ve got to do is improve our margins, and that means we’ve got to get evaluating clinicians to do as many evaluations and assessments as possible, and we’ve got to get the non-evaluating clinicians doing the majority of the straight visits,” he said.

There are home health providers trying to do more to be a better partner to payers and referral sources. But, sometimes – to Domico’s point – less is more.

In general, providers agreed with the idea that they should focus on their strengths, and find a way to outsource their weaknesses, or at least level up in those areas.

“If [that margin] is not going to be given to you, how are you going to get it?” Domico said. “I think you get it by really being an expert at what you’re really good at, which is delivering care. And if those other things are not working for you, then I think it’s time to look at doing something different.”

Working with other payers

As those fee-for-service rates become less reliable than they’ve been in the past, providers are having to spend far more time thinking about their Medicare Advantage (MA) strategies.

With less growth in traditional Medicare payment, it’s paramount to avoid MA payers that reimburse at a subpar rate. For the most part, providers don’t expect – but do hope for – MA rates on par with traditional Medicare rates.

But 40% lower, for instance, is unsustainable.

“In the state of Florida, we have 850 home care agencies, and so Medicare Advantage plans still consider us to be largely commodities,” Donaldson said. “When they can find an agency next door that’s willing to do a visit for $80, they’re not going to pay us $130. Irrespective, it seems, to how much we can prove that our quality is better than any of our neighbors.”

Pinnacle has had success with one MA plan, however. That plan has agreed to pay the company with some upside opportunity.

That came about when the plan moved from being managed internally to being managed by a third party.

“We had a good relationship with the third party,” Donaldson said. “In negotiating, we said, ‘Look, this really needs to be an episodic relationship, even if it’s at a percentage of Medicare. Give us the opportunity to control our own destiny, give us a pot of money and let us run with it.’”

While some improvements have been made in home health contracts between MA plans and providers of late, Domico still sees providers largely as “price takers” in the relationship.

“I think we are price takers, and I think the negotiations are really very one-sided,” she said.

But she also believes that there’s still plenty of opportunity out there for providers to be paid more fairly, and that starts with regional plan partnerships.

Well Care Health COO Rebecca Higbee, also on stage at FUTURE, said her company has seen most success with those local-level health plans.

“Some of our best partners are those regional partners,” she said. “Those local partners where you can speak to the actual decision makers of the plan.”

Well Care Health provides home health and hospice services across North Carolina and the upper part of South Carolina.

Higbee also emphasized that health plan relationships need to be nurtured on a daily basis.

“It still takes years to make progress,” she said. “We have made progress of late. There’s a handful of payers that are finally seeing the value, while at the same time, there’s also payers that in years past have seen value and are now looking to move backwards. It’s really a mixed bag. I think it’s something we have to be working on daily, and something we have to be thinking about daily.”

The post Top Home Health Operators: If You’re Not Really Good At Something, Ditch It appeared first on Home Health Care News.

Top home health leaders maintain that they’re operating in a space filled with “tons of opportunity.”

Payment uncertainty and other contemporary operating dynamics can muddy the waters, but there’s a way through those challenges, those leaders believe.

“I’m going to sound delusional,” Pinnacle Home Care CEO Shane Donaldson told me on stage last week at Home Health Care News’ FUTURE conference. “But I think [the home health industry] is in a great place for the future.”

At the conference, many of the same talking points were hit: Medicare Advantage (MA), fee-for-service rate cuts and staffing.

But providers are on the brink of their third straight year of rate cuts, and are about a decade into significant MA penetration in most cases. The staffing situation ebbs and flows, and providers are used to that, too.

As I talked to home health leaders in one-on-ones and on stage last week, I filled a whole page of notes related to what providers were bullish on.

Donaldson is bullish on the entire industry. Other leaders, too, are bullish – and offered specifics on where they feel like they can score some ‘wins’ in the near-term future to keep their patients happy and their margins healthy.

Those notes, quotes and other takeaways from last week’s FUTURE conference in Nashville, Tennessee, are the topic of this week’s exclusive, members-only HHCN+ Update.

Tons of opportunity

Pinnacle Home Care is one of the largest home health providers in the state of Florida. The New York-based HCS-Girling recently acquired Pinnacle, as both companies look to accelerate their growth goals.

At some point, Donaldson said that he believes HCS-Girling – along with Pinnacle – will have a home-based care footprint all along the East Coast.

Donaldson believes that home health providers will have the ability to optimize operations so much over the next few years that CMS will have to again consider large cuts to payment. He said it would be a “good problem to have.”

“I have a belief that in the not-too-distant future, if we take advantage of the current technologies, when we submit our cost reports, the problem we will have is that our margins are too high,” Donaldson said. “With artificial intelligence, robotic process automation, predictive analytics – all of these things that we have at our fingertips now are going to make life so much easier.”

Donaldson was essentially suggesting that margins will improve so much because of newly available technology that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) will again feel the need to chop rates.

Even if that sounds “delusional” – as Donaldson warned it would – many providers feel the same about certain technology advancements.

Take the aforementioned issues plaguing home health care. Scheduling is the leading cause of turnover in the industry, and there’s now AI solutions to address that. That improves retention, and, in turn, staffing. The same goes for AI that helps reduce clinicians’ documentation time.

Predictive analytics can help better manage patients with chronic conditions, which will help in the Home Health Value-Based Purchasing (HHVBP) and in value-based arrangements with other payers.

Those are just a few examples. And, of course, it won’t just be that easy.

But nearly every vendor was enthusiastic about these new offerings at the conference. This time, their enthusiasm was matched by providers.

By driving down operating costs, providers will also be better able to take on MA members that come with a lower – or currently non-existent – margin. Compassus CEO Mike Asselta suggested on stage that providers needed to go through some “maturation” before realizing all of the opportunity that lies ahead of them.

That mostly had to do with presenting value to payers, however.

In that arena, providers are already figuring out ways to better deal with payers, even if a better way is walking away from agreements entirely.

“I would suggest that providers really look at their [payer] strategy,” Interim HealthCare COO Rexanne Domico also said on stage. “What are the regional opportunities? What are other national opportunities? Where can you find that upside that’s not necessarily wholly dependent upon the big managed care providers? There’s some opportunity that’s still out there.”

Almost every provider still agrees that working with health plans in home health care is not easy.

But, anecdotally, providers told me that they’ve had a much better go at it when working with regionally focused plans.

“Some of our best partners are those regional partners,” Well Care Health COO Rebecca Higbee said on stage. “Those local partners where you can speak to the actual decision makers of the plan.”

Oftentimes, within national health plans, the decision makers on home health rates are siloed from the head decision makers. The rate setters are most interested in keeping costs down, while the head decision makers may see more home health access as a better long-term strategy.

That disconnect leads to snags in negotiations between national MA plans and home health providers.

“It’s really difficult when you’re speaking with large payers,” Higbee continued. “You’re not going to change their mind about the directives that they’ve been given. You’re not going to change their mind about the plan that they have laid out for the next quarter. But you can speak to the medical director of a local plan and really get their buy-in, in terms of the quality and the return for them.”

Domico also said that she believes there’s room for providers to get “more creative” in how they approach different payers, specifically around the presentation of home health care’s value.

A slew of leaders told me that they were encouraged by Enhabit’s (NYSE: EHAB) termination of its contract with UnitedHealthcare earlier this month.

Providers want to work with big payers, but they also need better rates – at least for now.

“I would just say that my heart was warm the other day when Enhabit walked away from the table with UHC,” Donaldson said. “I think that we’ll look back on that as being a significant event.”

The post ‘Opportunity Is Still Out There’: AI, Regional Payers And The Other Factors Exciting Home Health Leaders appeared first on Home Health Care News.

Home-based care providers that are open to receiving employee and client feedback, and then open to acting upon that feedback, have a natural leg up on competitors that don’t do either.

In fact, providers that collected employee and customer feedback, and acted on it, were able to recruit 90% more employees, according to data from Activated Insights.

But employee recruitment isn’t the only benefit that companies like Tribute Home Care, Pinnacle Home Care and Homewatch CareGivers are seeing from feedback work.

Tribute, for one, takes several approaches to find out what staff and clients are thinking. On the client side, the company sends out a survey after the first three weeks of service. Additionally, the company sends out a more in-depth survey for clients every six months.

On the caregiver side, Tribute conducts an annual “caregiver happiness survey.” The company has also held focus groups over the years.

One of the biggest pieces of feedback that Tribute has received from caregivers was related to wage and volume of hours. The company has also heard about the importance of PTO and 401(k) matching from caregivers.

Caregivers have even voiced their thoughts about the company’s sartorial requirements, leading to improvements when it comes to staff uniforms.

“We have concentrated a lot on making sure the wage is really competitive, and making sure we get good competitive information on that,” Tribute CEO John Sneath told Home Health Care News. “We match our 401(k), and have seen a very big increase in participation. And people really love our uniform.”

Tribute also has someone in place who oversees caregiver excellence. This means that there is a role at the company dedicated to improving conditions based on the needs of these workers.

“That person reports to me and we talk about things, and then we decide the best way forward,” Sneath said. “Often, these problems are pretty complex, and involve more than one department. We typically will put together a group, and have somebody who’s in charge of project management. Then we first make sure we all agree on what the problem is. We’ve learned over the years that defining the problem is absolutely critical.”

Overall, Tribute has seen feedback collection have the biggest impact on the company’s turnover.

“We’re very consistently at 48% to 55% turnover, which is shockingly high, but not in our industry,” Sneath said. “Our characters tend to be very happy with us.”

Tackling caregiver consistency

At Homewatch CareGivers, the No. 1 feedback point the company receives from clients has to do with consistency in their caregivers, and who’s coming into the home, according to Todd Houghton, president of Homewatch CareGivers.

The company uses a third party to conduct these feedback surveys for them.

Plus, individual Homewatch CareGivers franchise locations conduct surveys roughly once per quarter.

To address caregiver consistency, among other things, Homewatch CareGivers rolled out Homewatch Connect, a technology platform that gives clients more access to caregivers.

“It provides consistent access to when their caregiver is not in the home,” Houghton told HHCN. “They have their caregiver coming in for X amount of visits a week, providing service, but they can virtually connect with that caregiver too. It really provides consistency and care for the customer.”

Before implementing this solution, Homewatch CareGivers – like many of their home-based care peers – were navigating client cancellations.

“There’s a high rate of cancellations on the customer client side, which resulted in reduced hours for the caregiver,” Houghton said. “There was frustration amongst caregivers, which resulted in call outs. That affected the consistency of delivery of care, so it kind of walks hand-in-hand. When we heard this, it was an ‘ah ha’ moment. We need to make sure that we have better consistency of care for the client, and the same caregiver coming day after day.”

Connecting a workforce

After receiving feedback from employees, Pinnacle has set its sights on making a workforce that isn’t all in one place feel more connected.

“We’re hiring people outside of our office footprint, creating more opportunities for new talent, which creates more remote-based employees,” Dan Kefgen, chief people officer at Pinnacle, told HHCN. “What comes from that is, as opposed to the staff member that comes into an office every day, and can be part of just different things that happen — whether it’s a potluck or a team lunch — that individual isn’t in the work environment. That feeling of connection and belonging, at times, can be a challenge.”

Similar to industry peers, Pinnacle utilizes surveys to learn more about what clients and employees want.

As a response, Pinnacle introduced an employee engagement app to give employees a vehicle to connect.

“Most times when I say, you have to meet people where they’re at, that’s going to be on their cell phone,” Kefgen said. “We focused on how we can leverage that opportunity to keep people connected, even though they may not be walking through your front door, so to speak.”

While it’s still too soon to determine the impact of Pinnacle’s employee engagement efforts, receiving feedback has been integral to the company overall.

Ultimately, Kefgen stresses the importance of targeted feedback.

“There’s a fine balance, in terms of asking for feedback and asking for too much feedback,” he said. “You have to make sure that it’s purposeful, it’s targeted, and you can make time to do something with it.”

The post Where Client, Employee Feedback Surveys Are Taking Home-Based Care Providers appeared first on Home Health Care News.

HCS-Girling Backs Pinnacle Home Care

HCS-Girling and Pinnacle Home Care announced earlier this month that the two companies have a definitive agreement to enter into a strategic partnership. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. 

The New York-based HCS-Girling provides home health and home care services, and Pinnacle Home Care is one of the largest home health providers in the state of Florida.

“Pinnacle is an important provider in the Florida market, having established a reputation for excellent clinical quality and a very strong corporate culture,” Jeffrey and Agnes Shemia, the co-CEOs of HCS-Girling, said in a statement. “HCS-Girling and Pinnacle both share a unique founding story as clinician-founder-led platforms. We are extremely excited about this partnership and the ability to service patients across geographies, working hand in hand with Shane and the Pinnacle leadership team to provide best-in-class care.”

Together, the two companies will “link the care continuum across two growing markets,” according to the release.

“Pinnacle and Girling are a perfect match with meaningful cultural overlap,” Pinnacle Home Care Founder and CEO Shane Donaldson said in a statement. “Both businesses are founder- (and clinician-) owned and operated and privately held. Both organizations recently celebrated 20 years of service in their respective communities, an important marker in how far both have come in their journeys as health care providers. Pinnacle looks forward to serving our patients, staff and referral partners for the next 20 years.”

HCS-Girling also recently acquired the personal care operations of Addus HomeCare Corp. (Nasdaq: ADUS) in New York.

Pinnacle’s chief sales officer said that the partnership with HCS-Girling will bring the company “considerable balance sheet strength.” The leadership teams will remain the same at each organization.

“We are so proud of our Pinnacle Family and all that we have achieved over the past several years,” Pinnacle President Michael Froning added. “Growth across the Florida home health market has not come without challenges, including the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as PDGM and RCD. As Pinnacle developed our longer-term strategies, we knew that future growth would require larger capital support, but we actively chose not to follow the path of our competitors to be acquired by a payvider or private equity, or the publicly traded home health providers.”

BrightSpring Health Services acquires Haven Hospice

On Monday, BrightSpring Health Services (Nasdaq: BTSG) announced a definitive agreement to acquire Haven Hospice, a Florida-based operator that provides services in North Central Florida.

The deal was worth $60 million, according to BrightSpring, and expands its service capabilities in a Certificate of Need (CON) state.

The company has closed multiple home-based care deals in 2024 already.

“We are excited to welcome Haven Hospice into BrightSpring, bolstering our existing hospice care line of business and expanding our hospice services into the CON state of Florida,” BrightSpring President and CEO Jon Rousseau said in a statement. “The delivery of compassionate hospice care is critical for patients and their families, and we’re committed to delivering that to high-need Floridians. It is extremely difficult to enter the Florida hospice market, and with this recent expansion of services, we can now provide high-quality care to more patients and their families during the most difficult time in their lives.”

In addition to hospice care, the Haven acquisition will also allow BrightSpring to provide advance care planning and palliative care. The deal is expected to close in the third quarter.

Compassus and OhioHealth enter home health, hospice partnership

The home-based care provider Compassus has formed a partnership with the health system OhioHealth. Specifically, the former will manage the latter’s home health and hospice service lines.

“We’re proud to collaborate with OhioHealth to deliver high-quality, patient-centered home health and hospice care to ensure patients and families have the support they need wherever they call home,” Compassus CEO Mike Asselta said in a statement. “As our teams come together, we’ll continue to focus on patients, partnership and innovation to deliver superior care.”

The Brentwood, Tennessee-based Compassus provides home health care, home infusion, palliative care and hospice care services. Its 7,000 employees provide care across 30 states.

The company also entered into a similar agreement with Bon Secours Mercy Health earlier this year.

As a part of the agreement, Compassus will “manage operations as both organizations work to ensure smooth continuity of care for patients and families.”

The OhioHealth network includes 15 hospitals, more than 200 ambulatory sites and home-based care services that serve patients in 50 counties in Ohio.

Northrim Horizon acquires Noble Hospice and Palliative Care

The private equity firm Northrim Horizon has acquired Noble Hospice and Palliative Care. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The deal took place through Northrim’s portfolio company ITC, which is a personal care provider, according to Hospice News.

“As long-term business builders, we try to view the world in decades as opposed to three-to-five years, which allows us the luxury to block-out short-term noise in markets,” Jack Lawson, Northrim operating partner and Noble’s new CEO, told Hospice News. “We believe hospice is an enduring segment within the broader home care industry and provides essential services to patients in a cost-effective and preferred setting. We are big believers that the best long-term care meets patients where they are.”

The Arizona-based Noble’s network includes a patient census of about 200.

“Noble has a strong track-record of growth, an experienced clinical and operations team and an enduring, patient-focused model of care that makes for a fantastic entry-point in the industry,” Lawson said. “We believe Noble Hospice has a business model and standard of care that will stand the test of time.”

HHAeXchange acquires Cashé

The New York-based home care technology platform HHAeXchange has acquired Cashé Software, a Minnesota-based home care operations and billing company.

“Today marks an exciting milestone as we join forces with Cashé. In addition to its robust product set, the company shares HHAeXchange’s passion for homecare, technology and innovative software,” HHAeXchange CEO Paul Joiner said in a statement. “Home care agencies need purpose-built technology to support them in delivering quality care. We are thrilled to partner with the Cashé team to collaborate on our vision of delivering the most comprehensive solution that drives operational efficiency, increases compliance, and improves health outcomes.”

Cashé already works with more than 400 home care agencies in Minnesota, according to the press release.

“For 20 years, Cashé has been focused on ensuring our customers can rely on our software to help them deliver the best care in the home,” former Cashé President Praba Manivasager, who will join HHAeXchange’s leadership team, said in a statement. “This commitment is strengthened by our partnership with HHAeXchange, and we look forward to working together as a team to accelerate our vision of building the software platform that sets the standard for efficient workflows and insightful data.”

The post Transactions: HCS-Girling’s Deal With Pinnacle Home Care; BrightSpring Health To Acquire Haven appeared first on Home Health Care News.

More home-based care providers have become curious about the benefits of artificial intelligence (AI), especially when it comes to its potential around easing clinician and caregiver workload and improving patient outcomes.

Companies like Homewatch CareGivers and Pinnacle Home Care moved past the curiosity stage, and have implemented AI tools into their operations and clinical processes.

At Pinnacle Home Care, clinicians are using an AI-powered large language model, ybot, to help streamline comprehensive assessments and OASIS.

“We have been able to cut the start of care time down to 87.3 minutes from 119 minutes, so huge savings for clinicians,” Kathy Hoffman, chief clinical officer at Pinnacle Home Care, told Home Health Care News. “ybot gives them the ability to document real-time, which improves the quality of the documentation. In home health, because there’s so much documentation, what we usually find is most clinicians are going home and trying to document in the evening. Therefore, it’s creating a difficult work-life balance for them and untimely documentation.”

Pinnacle Home Care is a Oldsmar, Florida-based home health provider that also offers personal care services. The company serves over 80% of the Medicare population in Florida.

With ybot, clinicians are able to record their documentation. The AI tool asks the clinicians questions based on the OASIS assessment, and they are able to respond. The tool also lets the clinician know if they are answering incorrectly, and gives them the correct response options.

Real-time documentation is a game-changer for most clinicians who typically, as Hoffman pointed out, complete their documentation after hours based on quick shorthand notes.

“As time passes throughout the day, they see multiple patients, and their recall for the quality and the accuracy of that documentation starts to diminish,” she said.

Decreasing documentation time also benefits patients, because it allows clinicians to focus on clinical work and deepen their connection with those they are delivering care to. 

“They’re able to give more face time to the patient, able to interact better with that patient … to drive patient satisfaction,” Hoffman said. “Nobody wants to sit behind a clinician as they’re typing on a computer.”

In addition to documentation, Pinnacle Home Care also utilizes AI as a personal assistant tool for clinicians.

Typically, home health clinicians are driving from patient to patient. In between patients, clinicians are often reviewing patient charts. Pinnacle Home Care wanted to make this process easier.

“What we’ve created is a personal assistant that really turns that drive time into productive time,” Hoffman said. “Instead of having to pull over and read the medical chart of that patient … they just click a button. The system knows which patient they’re seeing next because we have full integration with our EMR system, and it tells them all the clinical and non-clinical information they need to really walk into that patient’s house to be prepared to provide that high-quality visit. It also gives them the ability to listen to the clinical notes from other disciplines prior to that visit to really enhance that collaboration.”

How AI is helping prevent falls

Homewatch CareGivers is using an AI tool to collect data on patient movements and respiration, in order to prevent falls among seniors.

The company is doing this by installing three-inch censors, and smart cameras for back up, in clients homes.

“They can go anywhere in the home, and it helps detect movement and sounds, and uses AI to do predictive analytics for us on the client, so we have a better insight to potential fall risks, or things that are going on in the home that could result in a hospitalization,” Todd Houghton, president of Homewatch CareGivers, told HHCN.

The company’s use of AI for fall prevention started in a pilot phase, but over the last three months, Homewatch CareGivers has been rolling this out in their offices across the country.

Homewatch CareGivers’ focus on fall risk is especially important because falls are severely detrimental to seniors.

“It can be life threatening to them,” Houghton said. “We can use this tool to help identify that, and improve outcomes, and give them a better quality of life, so they’re less likely to fall and have a concussion or break a hip.”

More than 14 million older adults report falling annually, according to data from the CDC.

Before Homewatch CareGivers began using AI for fall prevention, the company had to rely solely on what caregivers were able to observe in the home.

“Now, with this advanced technology we’re able to, essentially, observe 24/7 unobtrusively,” Houghton said. “If there’s a risk of something happening, AI generates this in the dashboard to give rankings or assign a likelihood that there could be a fall and then we can send somebody to the home to help that client, if need be.”

Through the process of piloting AI for fall prevention, Homewatch CareGivers had to deal with clients who were concerned that the tools could potentially be intrusive. This meant that the company had to talk through the process with clients and ensure their privacy.

“Our technology is HIPAA-compliant and secure on a cloud,” Houghton said. “We do share that with all of our clients as part of our service agreements that we have with them. The fact that it’s in writing, with the service agreement, and we talked through it when we’re doing an intake process, it really brings them better peace of mind.”

Houghton noted that client footage and data is on a closed network, and the clinicians are the only ones monitoring clients.

During the pilot phase, Homewatch CareGivers was able to reduce hospitalizations by 33%.

AI use across home-based care

Homewatch CareGivers and Pinnacle Home Care are not the only home-based care providers that are implementing AI to further advance care and operations.

AccentCare is using AI to improve the start of care process.

Meanwhile, Devoted Guardians implemented an AI employee recruiting system in order to increase engagement with job applicants.

More recently, Trent Smith, the CEO of the Oklahoma City-based Accentra Home Health and Hospice, announced the launch of his generative AI platform Apricot. The app counts companies like Elara Caring and Choice Health at Home as part of its user base.

Looking ahead, Hoffman believes that home-based care still has a long way to go in its embrace of AI. She believes that Pinnacle Home Care’s implementation of AI has allowed its staff to lean into their area of expertise.

“AI will never replace humans,” she said. “I think that’s everybody’s fear, but you will always need a human at the end. It’s not just clinicians, it’s admin support — the ability for us to remove mundane, repetitive tasks that don’t require a lot of thought process from them really improves where they feel their value in the company is because they’re able to then perform the tasks they have experience in, that they’re experts in.”

The post Home-Based Care Providers Continue To Find New Use Cases For AI appeared first on Home Health Care News.