Government Deadlines, Provider Needs Renew Market Energy for Homecare Technology

Rising interest in ACOs and heightened CMS regulations over Medicare dollar reimbursements are stirring market interest in homecare technology—a previously stagnant market-and increasing demands for interoperability with other systems. In preparing for the recent report, “Homecare 2011: New Expectations, New Market Energy,” the Orem, Utah-based KLAS interviewed more than 300 providers in more than 300 home health agencies to better understand the increasing battle between best-of-breed and enterprise vendors.

Best-of-breed vendors tend to score higher across the board in the homecare market for meeting complex CMS regulations, but have little to offer providers in the way of interoperability. Enterprise vendors typically play the integration advantage in healthcare, but at present have a larger distance to cover. All providers said they are still miles from effectively sharing data electronically with hospitals.

More than half of the study participants expressed that, although their homecare solution allowed them to bill more quickly and accurately, it was difficult to prove their system's ability to reduce costs. Additionally, many providers are looking into telehealth as an emerging healthcare paradigm for remotely monitoring patient care and report that it is hard to justify the large, upfront IT purchase because the return on investment is unclear.

Homecare vendors find themselves in a two-tier market when it comes to performance scoring and a 12-point spread separates the leaders from the rest of the field. Findings for homecare best-of-breed vendors include: CareAnyware, Delta, HEALTHCAREfirst, HealthWyse, Homecare Homebase, Procura, and Thornberry. Enterprise vendors covered in the report are Allscripts, Cerner, McKesson, and MEDITECH. Epic's solution has not yet reached the market penetration needed for inclusion in the report.