A Prediction for the Future of Post-Acute Care

April 1, 2021
April 1, 2021

Post-acute and non-acute care are changing dramatically with the transition to value-based care. Organizations must ramp up their attention to competency, care quality, and efficiency to establish themselves as the providers of choice to work with acute care hospitals. Employees are key to this change, and HealthStream provides solutions to help organizations invest in creating highly trained and competent staff across the continuum of care.

In this episode of our podcast, we spoke to Vickie Harris, the President and founder of QEC Partners, who also serves as the current Board Chair of the Council on Aging of Middle Tennessee, about how post-acute and non-acute providers will need to adapt to survive in the world of value-based care. Listen to hear why Vickie has a reputation as an innovative and strategic thought leader related to care system improvement and integration that supports person-centered services.

Forecasting the Future of Post-Acute and Non-Acute Care

We asked Vickie about the future of healthcare in this part of the market and where she thinks post-acute and non-acute care are headed. She responded, “It’s the rethinking, the reengineering that I [am excited] about. We’ve got bricks and mortar. We’ve got traditional post-acute providers. We’ve got non-acute providers. But what we know is that for the last almost nine years, everyday, 10,000 boomers are turning age 65. We know from the research from interviewing thousands of people that they prefer to be [aging] at home in their communities. This means that we have this huge opportunity to deliver services in new different ways to people in the community.

Technology Will Be Key

Now, some people will pause and say, “Well, we don’t have enough workers already, and so how are we going to do this?” We have to apply technology. We’ve got to rethink and reengineer. We’ve got to look at technology. Where can we integrate technology to support services in the community? Significant opportunities [exist], I believe, for nursing facilities who are literally, sandwiched between two types of change.

Challenges Also Create Opportunities

Nursing facilities are sandwiched against the value-based purchasing change, where SNFs are becoming their own separate business model per se, not this combined model within one facility. You’re seeing companies establish free-standing skilled nursing facilities. That leads that nursing facility sector, that long-term services sector, sitting there in these buildings, not able to cover their costs. However, I would love to see facilities to begin to think of themselves not as nursing facilities, but as chronic condition management hubs for their communities. How do they take their core competency around the work they do for the folks that they provide residence for and extend that into the community around them? I believe this makes this an exciting time to then create new opportunities. Leveraging the core competency of the years, decades of expertise that has been built up in that sector, that is now standing there thinking, “What do I do?” I mean, you have value. You’ve just got to figure it out.

This is an exciting time for innovation, strategic thinking, getting outside the walls of what you’ve always done, and thinking about what it is that really drives the value of your organization. Is it the bricks and mortar? Is it, that traditional model, operating model that you’ve been utilizing?”

Listen to Vickie’s full podcast recording here.