The number of nurse practitioners entering the home-based medical care field continues to impress.

“NPs have driven real growth in HBPC,” said Ron Ordona, DNP, FNP-BC, GS-C, a house call provider with Senior Care Clinic in Sacramento, California. “With the advent of FPA [or ‘Full Practice Authority,’ which allows nurse practitioners to evaluate and diagnose patients, and order and interpret diagnostic tests and initiate and manage their treatments], more and more NPs will be able to address the needs of the homebound, an underserved and under-reached segment of the older adult population.”

And the demand is poised to keep growing. “Shorter hospital stays are leading to more acute patients outside of the hospital, and I believe this will result in more acute needs for medical care in the home,” said Michael Kingan, DNP, AGPCNP-BC, CWOCN, with Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore. “This will be due in part to the aging baby boomer generation, who will want their different needs met at home and will not likely be as willing to accept assistive living or nursing home care. This trend will provide NPs with increasing opportunities to practice outside of clinic/hospital or facility-based environments.” 

To support this important segment of the HBPC workforce, the Home Centered Care Institute, along with Ordona and Kingan, will present two half-day workshops tomorrow, Tuesday, June 21, at the American Association of Nurse Practitioners’ annual conference at Orlando’s Orange County Convention Center:

• House Calls: The Key to Transforming Your Career and Health Care (Session # 22.1.025; 8am-12pm ET/7-11am CT)

• Building Your House Call Toolbox: Optimizing Care for Your Homebound Patients (Session # 22.1.055; 1-5pm ET/12-4pm CT).

The goal of the sessions is to educate NPs on house calls and improve their skills – which typically prove to be well-suited for the HBPC field. “NPs’ ability to combine the art and science of nursing and medicine makes them uniquely prepared for home-based primary care,” Kingan added.

HCCI Drives Awareness of Home-Based Primary Care at AGS Meeting

The Home Centered Care Institute attended the American Geriatrics Society (AGS) Annual Scientific Meeting in Orlando last month to foster the awareness and growth of home-based primary care (HBPC) among attendees.

“We were excited to meet so many providers who were growing their HBPC services or starting an HBPC practice,” said Dana Crosby, HCCI’s Senior Director, Engagement & Practice Development. “It was especially exciting to meet all the Fellows who were seeking HBPC as part of their geriatrics training. This reinforces that our advocacy efforts around HBPC are having an impact.”

Attendees received valuable information regarding the HCCIntelligence™ Resource Center, as well as information on how HCCI could help them achieve their professional goals through workshops, online courses, and other educational opportunities.

Also at the conference, HCCI facilitated a successful kickoff meeting for the new Home-Based Primary Care Special Interest Group (HBPC SIG). More than 30 AGS members attended to discuss how to best engage individuals in considering home-based care as a career pathway, share educational resources, and identify other organizations and AGS SIGs to collaborate with in the future. The SIG plans to submit a proposal focused on home-based primary care to present at next year’s annual AGS meeting, scheduled for May 4-6 in Long Beach, California.

Grant Recipients Continue to Advance Home-Based Primary Care

Throughout the pandemic, recipients of The John A. Hartford Foundation (JAHF) three-year grant, Moving and Scaling Home-Based Primary Care Phase II: Quality, Training and Advocacy, have continued driving home their mission to improve and expand access to high-quality home-based primary care (HBPC) for the homebound population of aging adults and other individuals with limited ability to leave their homes. As part of JAHF’s larger initiative to create age-friendly health systems, the grant has assisted the recipients in reaching critical milestones and expanding HBPC’s footprint.

“The collective progress made by these three initiatives is making an important contribution to the growing momentum in the health care policy arena to make high-quality home-based primary care more accessible,” said Scott Bane, JD, MPA, Program Officer at The John A. Hartford Foundation. “Our grantees are building the quality and training infrastructure needed to make value-based payment models that support age-friendly home-based care a reality.”

CMS Home-Based Primary Care Model Reduces Costs

The most recent Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ Independence at Home (IAH) Demonstration results revealed that medical practices providing home-based primary care for beneficiaries with multiple chronic conditions were 18% below their spending targets, which equaled $42.3 million in savings.

In the seventh year of the IAH Demonstration, the average reduction totaled $6,585 per beneficiary, CMS reported. And all 10 participants—nine practices and one consortium—lowered the per-beneficiary-per-month expenditures. More than 6,400 beneficiaries participated in the demonstration.

The model was designed to test the effectiveness of employing comprehensive home-based primary care services at home. It also sought to reward providers who deliver quality care while reducing costs.

Education Update

The curriculum for the July 21-22 Advanced Applications of HBPC™ Virtual Workshop has been redesigned to better prepare and equip learners to succeed in value-based payment arrangements. Designed for providers and practice staff looking to expand their knowledge and skills in home-based primary care (HBPC), the two-day live, virtual workshop will include actionable strategies with a value-based care lens in the following areas:

• Required staffing, infrastructure, and data
• Patient identification
• Cost-effective management of medications and conditions commonly encountered in HBPC patients (e.g., dementia and congestive heart failure)
• Quality measurement and reducing gaps in care
• Risk adjustment models, including Hierarchical Condition Category (HCC) coding
• Demonstrating the value of HBPC when negotiating with payers

HCCI relies on the support of individuals, corporations, and foundations to sustain our programs. Would you like to join our generous partners below in helping us ensure those in need of house calls get them? If so, please click here to make an individual donation. For organization-level opportunities, please contact James Warda, Vice President of External Affairs and Business Development.