Spring Hills wants to be able to do everything that other home-based care agencies do, while also doing everything that they don’t do.

Based in Edison, New Jersey, the company takes a bit of a different approach to home care — it actually considers itself a private-pay home health provider. Its ultimate goal is to create a full continuum of care within its network, filling in gaps in care it sees in the industry.

“We are currently positioning our business in the home care setting to be an all-in-one provider,” Andre Gomez, the VP of home care operations at Spring Hills, told Home Health Care News. “We are going to do what every other home care company does. But we are also going to do what every other home care company doesn’t.”

The private-pay Spring Hills’ network includes long-term care facilities, assisted living and memory care communities, and home-based care. All in all, it has 35 locations across seven states.

“The goal is really to devour the market trends and make sure that we stay ahead of them,” Gomez said.

Specifically, Spring Hills wants to be able to provide medical, pharmacy, concierge, occupational therapy and exercise services to all of its patients. In addition, it wants to become as big of a staffing business as it is a home care one.

As a private-pay-based home health provider, it has to alter the services it provides based on the on the certificate-of-need (CON) requirements in each state. It can provide less medical services in those states, for instance, but in non-CON states it has more flexibility.

“When patients have been conditioned and educated on the value of private-pay services, it’s easier for us to really augment and supplement the limitations and the cavitations that insurance provides our seniors,” Gomez said. “And that’s why we are able to give them better services through our home care.”

Gomez believes this gives Spring Hills a leg up in the industry, and that it tends to be a misconception that you can’t be a medical home health provider and in private pay.

“There is a tremendous attrition rate in private-duty home care and non-medical home care,” he said. “People are having to close doors, because they unfortunately did not innovate. They did not evolve, and they became casualties, unfortunately, because of the limitations they placed on themselves.”

Spring Hills believes its ability to be an all-encompassing post-acute care provider increases its value proposition to potential patients.

While many believe patients are mostly worried about financial costs when choosing a provider, the ability to stay with one agency throughout their journey actually ranks higher, Gomez said.

“They don’t want to tell their story to someone else — they want to go to a provider that is part of a bigger system,” Gomez said. “What we have seen is that when patients go to the health care providers that are not interconnected, it creates a lack of continuity and the lack of continuity really creates chaos. … When we admit someone into our post-acute care system, their information and medical history is shared through the continuum. So all the patient needs to do is just enjoy the ride, so to speak.”

Reducing readmissions

Spring Hills has aspirational growth plans, and part of those are its post-acute care centers, which combine its clinical and technological capabilities to reduce hospital readmissions for patients.

The provider announced in July that its post-acute care programs reduced the average 90-day hospital readmission rate of its patients to under 10%, with its home-based care unit helping lead the way.

“[Not a lot of] home care companies focus on exercise and wellness, even though lower-extremity weakness is the number one reason for older adults decline, so that was the first thing that we looked at,” Gomez said.

Every home-based care patient is assigned an exercise professional in Spring Hills’ network, another adjustment Gomez believes was made easier by its private-pay status.

After lower-extremity weakness, it identified other severe risk factors for readmission.

“Identifying lower-extremity weakness was the No. 1 priority, and then we augmented that to medication errors at No. 2 and nutritional insufficiencies at No. 3,” Gomez said. “And then we went to chronic complexities that lead to something called transfer trauma when a patient goes from one institution to another, and we also focus on social isolation.”

Combating those five risk factors has lowered readmission dramatically for Spring Hills in the short term, and the company believes its approach will pay major dividends in the long term as well.

“Our patients don’t go to the hospital,” Gomez said. “Why? Because they don’t fall because they’re not weak, and also because they’re socially stimulated.”