What are the newest obstacles home health agency owners face in 2023?

Home Health Care Challenges?

What are industry insiders talking about in terms of obstacles in the home health care industry in 2023 and beyond?

Coming out of a transitional year in 2022, the Home Health Care industry is looking ahead. Regulatory issues like OASIS-E and HHVBP are fresh on the horizon, and a quiet sort of cautious optimism that the worst of the pandemic and its disruptions are behind us is fueling a hopeful renaissance. With these fresh regulatory changes as well as the always present EVV system implementations hitting a fresh round of states, the area of the biggest concerns still seems to hover around the administration side of operating a homecare agency.

Recently, Dr. Anna Loengard (chief medical officer at Accent Care) stated that the entire Health Care industry is being bombarded by Electronic Health Records (EHR). Her concern is that industry players need to make certain that this does not affect the goal in providing the proper care. EHR software requirements and their enforcement seemed to be taking their toll on the care that agencies were proving. Ensuring that EHR is not too much of a burden on the clinician’s daily work life, and that systems such as Home health ehr software make an agency's job easier as opposed to bogged down in process and regulation, are certainly top of mind for owners and management. 

Another major health care provider's chief clinical and compliance officer pointed out that patient care issues and caregiver shortages showed no sign of easing, but could actually worsen this year. On the other hand, the increased role of new technology in home health could lead to an easier time with an agency's ability to manage patient care and adapted their business models to expand to new areas of home health care (such as adding non-skilled homecare).

Reimbursement for home care services & emerging technology

Timely reimbursed for provided home care services is also near top of pile for agency owners, and how regulatory changes will simplify, or complicate it. This is where technology like telehealth has a role in home care delivery, as the industry has moved forward in normalizing telehealth and tele-medicine in practical homecare use. 2021's Office of the Inspector General lead audit titled HHA Telehealth Project paved the way for this new horizon in healthcare. From early 2021, Medicaid and Medicare issued waivers set out upon the goal of creating flexibility for Telehealth.

Technology like EVV systems, home health software, agency management solutions, and other emerging tech, have become the epicenter of the home health care industry. Home health agencies are increasingly looking to digital tools to meet current challenges and ensure growth and stability.  The long overdue elimination of paper and manual processes in homecare agency operation has now become an almost essential operational norm. This shift will inevitably arm agencies with the ammunition they need to meet the challenges this year and beyond, providing forward thinking agencies embrace and adapt.

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