The healthcare trend to transition patients from acute-care settings to their homes is creating an increased demand for home infusion — but current home infusion policies and reimbursement structures often struggle to keep pace.
That’s the conclusion of a new Home Health Care News (HHCN) story written by Senior Reporter MK Manoylov. HHCN is a sister publication of HME Business.
For the story, Manoylov interviewed home infusion providers and home health care businesses including CommonSpirit Health, which supports patients in 24 states.
“There’s just that overall driver to try to get patients in the least expensive care setting possible, and almost always that’s an infusion at home,” Michael Ahrendt, CommonSpirit Health at Home’s senior vice president of infusion services, told Manoylov. CommonSpirit Health’s home infusion services include intravenous antibiotics, plus parenteral nutrition, enteral therapies, hydration and pain management.
New York-based Leap Health, an infusion care coordination platform, told Manoylov it’s seeing a fivefold increase in home infusion services in the last decade. Leap Health focuses on infusions related to chronic and inflammatory disease treatment for patients with Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, rheumatoid arthritis, cancer and neurological conditions including multiple sclerosis.
“There’s a lot more data now on the safety of administering these infusions [at] home, and I think more individuals and payers are also realizing the cost savings of moving patients to an equally high-quality site,” Sofia Shrestha, Leap Health’s senior director of clinical strategy and affairs, said.
As demand for home infusion has grown, the pace for moving patients from acute care to home care has quickened — which adds an additional challenge for home health providers.
Ahrendt said CommonSpirit Health traditionally received from one to three days’ notice when a patient requiring home infusion support was to be discharged: “Now, it’s very common at nine in the morning to say, ‘Hey, the doctor wants this patient to go home at 4 o’clock today. Can you do that? Can you make sure they have the insurance coverage for that? And can you get everything set up, including the nursing, to be available to get them going that evening in the home?’”
And given the current transitioning-to-home-care trend, Ahrendt said many patients needing home infusion care have more complex medical needs than home infusion patients in the past.
The National Home Infusion Association (NHIA) has for years urged Congress to update Medicare’s policy on home infusion to expand access to home infusion, “improve patient choice, reduce unnecessary utilization of higher-cost sites of care, and better align Medicare policy with today’s clinical standards,” the organization said in a July 2 statement.
NHIA continues to support H.R. 2172 and S. 1058, the Preserving Patient Access to Home Infusion Act bills currently in the U.S. House and Senate.
In remarks given on Jan. 8 during an appearance before the U.S. House Energy & Commerce Health subcommittee, NHIA President/CEO Connie Sullivan said, “Every year, over a million patients rely on home infusion to treat serious infections, immune disorders, cancer, heart failure and other complex conditions.” Sullivan added that receiving infusion treatments at home “is strongly preferred by patients because it helps them get the IV medications they need with the least disruption to their daily lives, allows earlier discharge from the hospital, and lowers the risk for complications such as drug-resistant infections. Home infusion is a mainstream part of modern health care delivery.”
Home Health Care News reporting by MK Manoylov.
