Io Health developed a novel technical approach for streamlining point-of-care documentation in home health. Until now, the technology seemed promising for delivering bottom-line benefits, but lacked robust empirical evidence in real-world care settings. The io team is excited to announce that it has just completed a round of tests with three large players in the US Home Health industry. Here are some highlights:
In tests with a 7,500 census US home health provider, io Health delivered over $90.00 per episode to the bottom line, providing a 36x return. The benefits included 2.1% ($78) increase in reimbursement per episode, 4.5% reduction in visit times from streamlined documentation and a 10% lower QA workload. Another customer saw $200 per episode bottom line benefits, with $190 in increased reimbursements, and 9.4% reduction in start of care documentation and improved value-based purchasing scores.
Improving efficiency is essential in the face of labor shortages and reimbursement reductions. Nevertheless, the most interesting conclusion of the study was that revenue benefits were far larger and faster than the benefits of time savings. The reason is that extra revenue goes directly to the bottom line, while even large reductions in documentation time (like we observed) provide smaller and slower benefits, such as through increased capacity for growth and clinician satisfaction. For example, we observed a 35 minute savings per start of care with one customer. However, their clinicians are paid on a per-visit basis and Medicare has minimum visit time requirements, so large reductions in documentation time help, but don’t translate to large benefits for cost or capacity in the short term.
Io Health is now focused on expanding our sales efforts in home health and expanding into adjacent markets. Contact: David Bell DavidB@ioHealth.ai
Discover more about io Health:
io Health optimizes point of care documentation for home health and hospice providers.
