How New Era Assisted Living Communities Are Increasing Their Relevancy

 First mover assisted living communities with an ‘eye on’ and a plan for the future are underway with and aggressively moving to position themselves to be ever more relevant to future clients. My engagements with these communities clearly points to two prime motivators. First, recognition that the age-at-home desire is serious and very real. Second, that advances in technologies can indeed provide a cost effective manner with which to engage and establish ‘early’ relationships with future clients.

My previous blog on “The Rise of the Virtual Nursing Home” attracted unprecedented traffic and stimulated a wide range of discussions. That was a good thing. What has been the takeaway from those discussions thus far? Let me share –

1.       There are active projects underway to set up technology demonstration centers located at the ‘brick & mortar’ communities that show how those ‘aging-at-home’ in the surrounding geographic areas can become part of the community.

2.       These centers will show how to improve the quality of life, security and social engagement while ‘aging-at-home’.

3.       They will serve as a provision centers (show rooms) for technologies that the community can provision to ‘boomers’ thereby engaging with them actively as future residents during their ‘age-at-home’ stage.

By taking these actions assisted living communities not only making very smart ‘marketing move’ but positioning themselves for new revenue sources not just for the technology services but for additional care giver and social services than can then naturally flow through their now established ‘virtual communities’.

Two technologies are at the starting point epicenter:

Unified care-recipient/care-giver tablet based communications – like MyHomeReach, custom branded to the community. This technology establishes a sense of community, allows for constant health status and security monitoring and is designed to embrace everyone involved with community news and events – including remote family members.

And, the use of (specialized for seniors) telepresence (video links) as in home video consoles to facilitate tele-health and social engagement. And, if permitted to view the health ‘situation’ and living conditions of those at home. The products have become very cost effective and are simple to set up

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As we at ChartaCares are actively working to frame them out, I can assure you that these initiatives are moving forward – aggressively. If you would like to discuss this subject further feel free to call me at 603-580-5497. I’d be happy to share what we have learned. www.chartacares.com

Virtual Nursing Homes On The Rise

We all understand the drivers for what is about to happen to skilled nursing facilities and retirement communities. Rising numbers of elderly, the desire to age at home, the challenges of affordability for additional staff, the capital costs of new or expanded facilities, the need to differentiate among competitors, shifting payment and reimbursement models are to cite but a few.

My prediction is that the rising numbers of seniors of the ‘boomer generation’ will re-write the healthcare landscape just as they have re-written every previous social issue they have faced. Trust me, this new dialogue is happening and it will re-cast healthcare. Being stimulated by this dialogue are a few critical considerations and insights that health care service providers, especially those that operate skilled nursing facilities and or retirement communities should deeply reflect upon.

What I am about to suggest is an enormous opportunity, not a forecast of doom.

Smart operators will move rapidly to construct the ‘virtual nursing home’. What is the ‘virtual nursing home’? Most simply defined it is a ‘operator’ that reaches out with technology to embraces the ‘age-in-place’ client. They will understand that their geographically located ‘brick and mortar’ facility will be transformed into a service ‘hub’ for human and technological resources that will embrace near-by private homes as an extension of their facilities. Private ‘age-at home’ homes will become integrated into the operator’s landscape. And it is all very do-able now.

Imagine connecting a private home to a centralized skilled nursing home control center. Each home can now have a video station, an alert link, a health vitals monitoring station, scheduled care visits, scheduled meal delivery and more. Back at the skilled nursing control center are monitoring stations capable of instant connections by voice and/or observations by video with protections for enhanced privacy. Human care givers can be easily and quickly dispatched. Medication and packages (read: oxygen tanks e.g.) delivery for the age-at-home client can be made to the central facility versus suppliers showing up on their doorsteps and subsequently delivered with assistance if needed. And yes, therapy robots can now be placed in homes to aid in care, surgical recovery and for use in cognitive impairment therapies.

There is no reason to not weave private ‘age-in-place’ clients into the fabric of existing and experienced care giving facilities. The age-in-place home becomes another ‘room’.

If you would like to discuss the rise of the virtual nursing home and what I call MyHomeReach, as it moves from concept to reality, give me a call, I’d be happy to share what we have learned.

603-580-5497

CREDIT Photo: Dreamstime.com

Connecting The New Dots In Home Health Care

As in any industry, the playing field and the rules of the game are constantly evolving. And perhaps nowhere more so than in home care. Changes are galloping ahead at an ever increasing pace. It is becoming increasingly difficult to identify and connect the right strategic dots to set a solid, secure and profitable path forward. Well no more. Escalating senior demographics, new and additional regulations, new policies, the new HHS STAR RATING disclosures and the new emerging models of home care businesses are revealing a clear picture.

There are two ‘dots’ in that picture that are inextricably connected. The ‘dot’ of achieving high HHS STAR ratings and the ‘dot’ of the vacuum that exists in care recipient unified communications that contributes to poor HHS STAR Ratings. Failure to connect these ‘dots’ and eliminate the vacuum will not bode well for home care businesses that disregard the connection.

Experience does teach some things:

To date, the adoption of technology by conventional home care services has been severely hampered by three major factors - (1) budgetary constraints (2) high levels of staff churn and (3) lack of internal IT resources. The new home care business models, especially those being funded by deep pocketed new venture investors, are moving to use technology to fill the vacuum. They will use technology to give them a competitive advantage, as they should. And, they are moving aggressively forward to seize the high ground of that advantage.

When technology does come upon the scene in traditional home care, it most typically arrives, internally focused, on only how to make the home care business more profitable. Now, I fully understand that this is not a bad historical choice of an objective for technology spending. But, as I said at the outset the landscape is changing.

With the ‘age-at-home’ momentum and with hospitals driving patients, under their new economic model, to choose hospital visits less frequently. The rules for home care competitiveness are changing.

Home care clients and their families now want and are being driven to take greater control by adopting a self-managed care philosophy, a desire to more positively impact and control the quality of their lives and enhance their abilities to engage with families, friends and their social community more robustly.

So what does all this mean to the conventional model of the home care services business?

To be future viable, home care businesses must move to offer a ‘unifying technology’ that positions them against their new era competitors with a solution that embraces their patient base ever more closely. To achieve and sustain reputable HHS STAR Ratings means that the new IT (technology) objective for home care needs to be one that enhances client/patient engagement and communications. This needs to be put at the forefront and it needs to be done quickly.

The choice made by future patients and their families will be significantly driven by access to a unifying technology for THEM being offered by the home care service they will select. While fee rates will always be significant factor in care provider selection, HHS STAR RATINGS and unifying technologies will dominate fees in importance. The competitors of the new era will see to it that this is what happens. Central to great HHS STAR RATINGS and thus survivability, will be the advancement and utilization of robust patient and family communications. Care giver/patient communications can no longer rely upon a cacophony of scheduled visits, phone calls, text messages, voice mails and e-mails – those times are over. The future of home care will be defined by a unified communications platform that is easy to use, is always ‘on’, enhances the quality of life, and one that enables your home care business to demonstrate a true differentiating value to your future clients.

Amazing Technology Enabled Health Care From Around the World

 I see through the lens of 40+ years of experience in global technologies that the evolution of technologies to aid, assist and enhance the quality of life and the delivery of care for a globally aging population has arrived a significant inflection point. Aging, by the way, is not just a U.S. issue. The UN’s Report on Aging has stated it is a global issue of great magnitude. The world’s older population will grow to more than 2 billion people! The ramifications of this eventuality are as broad and challenging as any socially driven global demographic issue we have faced. As it relates to healthcare technologies, the challenge being addressed presents as it always does, a unique opportunity to harness global innovation.

It is time to advance health care technologies created worldwide into readily accessible domestic solutions that are crucial to our quality of life, the purpose in life and delivery of care experienced by Seniors.

Thus far my experience in searching worldwide for technology enabled healthcare technologies and services has already led me to powerful solutions from Australia, Canada, China, Belgium, France and Ireland.

By looking abroad, we at ChartaCares have already made available a number of these very exciting technologies and services:

A unified senior touch screen friendly communications platform being deployed for Seniors, their care-givers, family, local service organizations, charitable entities and volunteers.

Humanoid robots that are actually at work, assisting with healthcare in Senior care facilities

A Social engagement service that reduces loneliness and enhances the quality of life via a very unique video services platform and a repertoire of ‘session professionals’ that lead discussion groups and take Seniors on web based tours and provide Senior’s with educational opportunities.

Remote Patient Monitoring systems that are critical to a healthy recovery or managing chronic illnesses.

Intelligent, automated behavior modification plans that enhance results achieved.

I also see advanced technologies being innovatively crafted for use by the Senior population such as ‘voice bio-metric’ signatures for healthcare related transactions and governmental interactions. Anti-microbial computer tablets for use in active care scenarios.

My point is that there exists an enormous source of creativity and innovation worldwide for health care technologies and services that needs to be cultivated. The time has come to begin to aggressively identify and share the work of global technology enabled health care developers. At ChartaCares we are working to do just that.

Many believe that the potential for the ‘future’ of health care is actually still some time off…well it is not, it is underway, now, and from locations around the world. We all can benefit from that.

We at ChartaCares are committed to advancing technology enabled healthcare from sources around the world . If you know of any such technologies or services you think we should review, please send me that information at mike@chartacloud.com. I will be sure to reach out to those sources. Thank you.

Two Big Mistakes Health Care Providers Are Making

We all can agree, I believe, that the era of patient engagement i.e. self-managed care is coming upon health care providers like a tsunami. It starts with the recasting of the dynamics of the health care delivery model which are being ever more driven by changes in payment models, quality of care metrics and technology. The more important drivers are, however, are that patients are seizing ever more control over their desire to manage their own health care and while doing so are becoming more representative of conventional consumer behavior, as they have been conditioned to it in other technology driven service sectors. Their experience in these other sectors has cultivated them to want open choices and self-managed, instant interactions via technologies. 

To express it another way - we will see an ever increasing trend in patients (read: consumer) moving (read: shopping) amongst care providers driven by their perception of the availability of and the quality of the patient engagement service component. The number of patients moving amongst providers, a number which I will call ‘customer churn’ is driving upwards toward the same percentage levels as in other technology driven subscription service industries. I expect to see a 10% churn rate to quickly become the new norm in health care. This means millions in lost revenues if not managed.

The mistakes start with care providers not having a proprietary, robust mobile patient engagement system. The studies I see, put the availability of such proprietary service applications being offered at less than 15% and sadly, they for the most part have poor satisfaction ratings versus the externally provided solutions. Bridging to the home in a proprietary manner will be critical.

Here is the real mistake. If care providers do not develop their own high quality proprietary patient engagement applications and rather chose to proceed to continue to outsource this function to third party external vendors, then the technical wolves of healthcare will soon be poaching their patients to the add-on health care services they plan to offer once the patient base that the health care providers have given third party providers is big enough. After all, now that they have your patients in their database and connected now as customers of theirs, why not then offer them tele-medicine services? Good bye customer! Call a traditional taxi owner about UBER and ask them how’s that going? Make no mistake about this, healthcare providers must take a proprietary approach to patient engagement. At stake are millions of dollars of revenue that you need to protect from ‘churn’ and from future poaching.

At ChartaCares we encounter these phenomena every day and our advice is always the same, adopt and deploy your own private labeled patient engagement application service. Keep your customers close to home. There are wolves out there.

Loneliness Is Real Killer

Take a step back and set aside for the moment all the typical chatter and story lines about how technology is empowering changes in healthcare. You know, like HIPPA security, health records exchange, patient-centric care, OASIS ICD coding, hospital re-admissions stats, laptops in the exam room – it goes on and on. Not that these are not appropriate matters and issues mind you, but I see a much more ‘human’ story emerging.

I have been a technology professional for more than 40 years and over that time I have continued to marvel at the revelations that are generated as new frontiers are pursued and outcomes evolve. My work in technology enabled health care has not failed to live up to that history and provide such revelations.

What I am increasingly observing first-hand is the human dimension, the magnificence of human response to encounters with technology when it delivers on ‘quality of life’. This of course can be easily seen with the impact of life saving advances in technology provided by the likes of drug treatment break-throughs, genetic therapies, imaging systems. These are critical and vital to quality of life and care to be sure. Yet while we all seem very familiar and comfortable with understanding and accepting the impact of conditions on health such as obesity, alcohol abuse and air pollution the fact is that loneliness has a greater life shortening probability impact than any of those conditions.

In my work with ChartaCares I see time and time again how technology ‘lights up’ people and patients not because the technology delivers ‘gee-wiz’ digital transactions making it easier for care recipients to do things like reorder a prescription and care givers to do billing more efficiently but because technology opens up and creates a new and enhanced connection to life as it is actually being lived. When one’s quality of life is so significantly and positively impacted the outcome of technology operates at what I referred to earlier - at the higher human level.

I see the defeat of loneliness and despair as a killer being achieved every day when I see via the technologies that we provide a senior who wants with great anticipation and excitement to join an active senior group experiencing together an on-line social gathering of friends with a common interest or an autistic or handicapped child break through the isolation in their lives and reduce their fear and stress via interactions with a humanoid robot or family members who are geographically separated increase their daily interactions and increase the knowledge of the condition and care of their aging parents via a unified communications platform. Everyone lights up! Why? As so very well defined by Eric Kim, Victor Stretcher and Carol Ryff in their research on preventative health care, a ‘purpose in life’ has been gained. The correct embrace of technology enables the elderly and those individuals with life conditions to recapture meaningfulness in their lives. This is why we at ChartaCares believe there is no better way to make a difference.

The Future of Health Care Is All In the Stars (and the Numbers)

Quantification of circumstance can deliver a rude awakening. The challenge faced in the U.S. as an aging population gains steam will demand aggressive solutions. But first, let’s visit the numbers:

Boomers are retiring at the rate of 10,000 per day – yes that’s each and every day.

Those over 65 are headed for a total population of 71.5 million

Add to that number those over the age of 50 and we are headed to an elderly population base of 112 million.

This is a population grouping that will post staggering numbers in: Alzheimer’s, Dementia, Diabetes, Chronic Heart Disease, COPD and hip and knee replacements.

By my actual personal count the number of different prescription drugs being advertised on TV and aimed at this group numbered 36 each with three repeats within two hours on average.  50% of adults take at least two drugs a day, 20% take five. Medication management and adherence is critical.

Clearly this is a generation in transition and, yes, it is in need of assisted car

Health care policy makers are working feverishly to address the quality of care and not just its cost. Health care models that pay more for better population health are underway. A rating system for home care services called the HOME HEALTH STAR RATING operated by the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare is now actively reporting results and awarding the ‘stars’ (the stars referred to in this article’s title) to home care providers. Here numbers come once again into play. In 2014 more than 2600 hospitals faced penalties costing over $450 million dollars resulting from less than acceptable hospital re-admission rates. Get tagged with a three star rating or less as a home care provider and you are probably going to be forced out of the business.

The National Association of Health Care has reported that 75% of health care operators will be or will be approaching unprofitability by 2017. One leading researcher reports that the number of health care service firms in home care will be reduced by over 80,000 and industry employment will decline by over 400,00 by 2019.

So, not only do we have a generation in transition but we have a care service provider industry struggling to meet generational demands, lower payments, increased regulatory scrutiny, a higher wages model and a lack of qualified caregivers. It is an industry reeling and in a dramatic transition itself.

Driven by these facts and conditions I make a continuous effort to search out and vet innovative health care technologies that will enable the ‘boomer’ generation to age more securely at home, improve the quality of their lives and simultaneously empower home care service providers to become more efficient while adding a demonstrable competitive differentiator to how they compete for new business. One recent discovery is MyHomeReach. The impact that MyHomeReach can have on hospitals seeking to reduce re-admissions is significant. Towns and community governments can now get a handle on their aging population’s health status thereby reducing the burden on first responders to what will be an alarming increase in medical conditions that need attention. With a product like MyHomeReach corporations also can now have a path to assisting the growing numbers of ‘sandwich’ generation workers who are frequently late to work or become absent due to the demands of caring for aging parents. Home Care services can offer a technology that embraces their customer base.

As has been the case so often in the past, innovative technologies arrive in with save-the-day solutions. Ahaa moments! MyHomeReach is a classical case in point. It’s the right technology and it’s available at the right time. If you want to get ahead of the numbers and reach for the STARS, get more information about MyHomeReach at www.chartacares.com or call me at 603-580-5497. I’d be happy to share what I have learned.