Navigating the challenges of home care is critical to ensure the well-being and independence of individuals who require assistance with daily activities. These challenges can range from coordinating care plans and managing medication schedules to addressing the care recipient’s and their caregivers’ emotional and social needs.
Effective navigation of these challenges can lead to improved quality of life, reduced hospital admissions, and a greater sense of autonomy for those receiving care. Further, addressing the unique needs and preferences of each individual can foster a more personalized and compassionate approach to home care.
By understanding the complexities involved and developing strategies to overcome them, healthcare providers, policymakers, and community organizations can work together to create a more supportive and accessible home care system.
Ultimately, the significance of navigating home care’s challenges lies in its ability to empower individuals, strengthen families, and promote a more inclusive and equitable healthcare landscape.
To shed some light on the same, we interviewed a home care industry expert to bring his perspective on navigating home care challenges in Massachusetts.
Who Did We Interview?
Earlier in his career, Jake Krilovich worked for a national Prostate Cancer patient advocacy non-profit and the National MS Society’s Greater New England Chapter, where he began seeing the incredible value for people to live and age in the comfort of their own homes.
In his current role, Krilovich advocates on behalf of the home care industry, works to strengthen the home care workforce, and promotes policies that support the delivery of high-quality, cost-effective home-based care.
He is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Let us now delve into what he has to say about navigating home care challenges:
Earlier in my career, I worked for a national Prostate Cancer patient advocacy non-profit and the National MS Society’s Greater New England Chapter. Through that work, I began seeing the incredible value for people to live and age in the comfort of their own homes.
The pandemic presented all of us with many challenges. But, it specifically put the home-based care industry into the spotlight. With the entire health care system shifting on a dime to keep people out of facilities, our industry was relied on in ways like never before.
Because of that there has been a dramatic increase in demand for home-based care. Yet, with all our workforce issues, insufficient reimbursement from Medicare, Medicaid and Managed Care plans, providers are unable to cover costs and meet the demand.
This is putting pressure on the entire healthcare system with hospitals unable to discharge patients back into the community, people going without the care they need or are authorized for – putting them at risk for hospitalization and transfer into higher-cost settings.
Our association is focused heavily on advocating for better reimbursement, but we’re also looking at career pathways, training opportunities, and the workforce pipeline. Reimbursement is crucial to the puzzle, but we also need to ensure that our workforce is well-compensated, well-trained, feels safe in the field, and has various career pathways within the industry to pursue if they want.
We have several standing workgroups and meetings with state policymakers, program administrators, provider associations, and legislators around three or four times a week on various topics. This work is critical to getting our industry’s challenges and value proposition to the forefront.
Our advocacy on better reimbursement isn’t only to keep home care and hospice providers solvent or be able to meet increased demand. It’s also to illustrate to policymakers that the significant investments we need in home-based care will save the State and Federal Government a lot of money in the long run.
The cost of well-funded home-based care to keep people at home longer, preventing falls or hospital admissions is a fraction of the cost of facility-based care or ER visits.
Much of our work centers on keeping our members up-to-date on the ever-changing regulatory landscape. But we also offer a lot on topics focused on operations or future trends – worker safety and de-escalation tactics, improving your onboarding and recruitment processes, mentoring new hires, how AI can improve worker satisfaction, etc.
We try to strike a balance between offering education that is necessary and education that is forward-looking.
I think it’s important that providers keep an open mind to technology solutions. There is a lot out there, and new solutions come into the industry every day. It can be overwhelming. But instead of digging your head in the sand and sticking with what you know or who you’ve used, I think it’s important for providers to explore what is out there and see if there is a return on the investment there for the taking. Interoperability is a big thing with these solutions – providers have many different systems; EMRs, EVV, HR, and training platforms.
So ensuring that your technology suite is efficient and easy to use will hugely impact worker satisfaction and reduce burnout.
Jake Krilovich’s insights underscore the critical importance of addressing the multifaceted challenges facing the home care industry. From workforce shortages and inadequate reimbursement to the need for innovative technology solutions, Krilovich’s perspective illuminates the complexities involved in ensuring high-quality, accessible home-based care.
As the Executive Director of the Home Care Alliance of Massachusetts, Krilovich’s advocacy efforts to collaborate with policymakers and healthcare stakeholders are crucial in elevating the value proposition of home care and driving systemic change.
His expertise highlights the imperative to holistically address home care’s challenges to empower individuals, strengthen families, and promote a more equitable healthcare landscape.
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