Although in-home care has made some major strides over the last few years, a recent 7wireVentures perspective piece laid out why we’re likely still in the “nascent stages” of a shift that has a long way to go before reaching its potential.
7wireVentures sets the stage by defining four distinct segments of home health consumers:
- Chronic Care – Seeks ongoing virtual care tailored to their needs, often with an in-depth treatment plan and frequent support for symptom and medication management.
- Preventative Care – Seeks routine virtual wellness appointments with a primary care physician, often desires convenient access to lab testing.
- Recently Discharged – Seeks consistent access to virtual care for support when issues arise, often related to new medications or health problems following in-patient care.
- Hospice Care – Seeks continuous in-person care to treat symptoms from the comfort of their own home, often facing a terminal illness.
The landscape of companies addressing those needs varies widely, but this market map does an excellent job grouping them across five primary categories: Preventative Care, Urgent Care, Chronic Care, Hospital at Home, Hospice and Palliative Care.
Using the above framework, 7wireVentures offers a trio of home health predictions:
Prediction 1 – As the industry shifts towards more home-based care offerings that bring a lower-cost site of care compared to traditional in-person settings, demand for such solutions will grow, thus setting in motion a virtuous cycle towards value-based care.
- This would also increase the focus on synchronized care and aggregated data collection, favoring platforms that can support different clinician types / modalities and tie it all together with EHR integration.
Prediction 2 – As demand for healthcare continues to outstrip supply and access to preventative care in traditional settings remains costly, incumbent healthcare stakeholders will expand offerings into the home.
- This would create the need for more partnerships to develop sustainable solutions, similar to Memorial Hermann’s joint venture with AccentCare that established the largest provider of in-home health services in the Houston area.
Prediction 3 – Given the increased ability to collect broader sets of user data, providers will be better equipped to develop deeper insights into consumers, and thus take a whole-person approach to care delivery.
- This would push personalized care toward earlier stage interventions, reducing costs further down the line and ultimately making the promise of always-on, preventative healthcare possible.
