While Medicare remains the dominant payer across home health, many providers are working to become “payer flexible.” LiveWell Partners is one such company. “We define payer flexibility as the ability to accept patients from our referral partners regardless of insurance,” LiveWell Partners CEO Jason Growe told Home Health Care News on the latest episode of […] The post LiveWell Partners CEO: Being ‘Payer Flexible’ Is Key To Success As Home Health Evolves appeared first on Home Health Care News.
While Medicare remains the dominant payer across home health, many providers are working to become “payer flexible.” LiveWell Partners is one such company.
“We define payer flexibility as the ability to accept patients from our referral partners regardless of insurance,” LiveWell Partners CEO Jason Growe told Home Health Care News on the latest episode of the Disrupt Podcast. “We recognize that our referral partners have home health needs for patients with a wide range of insurances. Our ability to willingly accept those patients beyond traditional Medicare is an important part of that referral relationship.”
LiveWell Partners is a home health and hospice provider headquartered in St. Louis. The company currently operates in St. Louis, Kansas City, Wichita, Kansas, Detroit and Cincinnati.
During the conversation, Growe talked about how the company is working to optimize its payer mix. He also touched on the importance of M&A to LiveWell Partners’ overall growth strategy, and how the company is working to expand its gross margins over time.
Below is that conversation, edited for length and clarity.
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HHCN: What are the biggest financial and operational challenges for home health providers, and how is LiveWell Partners navigating these pain points?
We’re experiencing the same ongoing shift to Medicare Advantage, and other payers, that everyone else is feeling, and as we regularly seek to reinvest in our team, those reimbursement challenges place greater pressure on our gross margins.
Our perspective on this goes back to quality. Our ability to deliver outstanding outcomes and experiences for our patients allows us to engage in more productive conversations with payers on structuring value-based contracts. Over time, our belief is that this will help us protect against those gross margin pressures.
Growe: This past fall, LiveWell Partners acquired Hope Home Care, an Ohio-based home health provider. To date, the company has completed five transactions. How big of a role will M&A continue to play in the company’s growth strategy?
We’re really excited about our partnership with Hope Home Care. They represent much of what we seek in an acquisition, a growing agency with a strong clinical team that delivers great outcomes. We’re also, in particular, excited about our partnership with Hope Mullikin, the founder, as a teammate for LiveWell Partners. We recognize the importance of branch leadership, and Hope is a wonderful leader for us. As we seek to grow, acquisitions are going to play a critical role. We’re constantly in the market, meeting agency owners like Hope and working with those that could be a fit for us. I expect that to continue moving forward into the future as we seek to expand throughout the Midwest in major markets like Detroit, Cincinnati, Dayton, St. Louis. As we continue to fill in our Midwest footprint, I expect us to make acquisitions in some smaller markets as well.
What qualities makes a company an attractive acquisition target for LiveWell Partners?
At the outset, we look for agencies that are first and foremost in our sort of geographic scope, in the Midwest. We look for a proven ability to deliver quality care and a stable business from a financial perspective, looking at revenue growth, profit margin, both at the branch level and gross margin level, etc.
We spend a lot of time with the owner and any other branch leader, so we can get comfortable with those that we’re going to partner with from an operational basis after a transaction closes. As we continue the conversation with them, we also spend a lot of time understanding what is driving that financial success. Is it the right payer mix? Do they have some interesting contracts? Are they able to continue to grow their revenue because they have a stable clinical workforce that we can grow with them — things along those lines.
This way we go into that partnership post acquisition with an integration process, knowing exactly what operational areas to leverage for continued growth, and then what needs a special focus. We understand that every branch has its own challenges, and we seek to be a good resource and partner for our branches to help them continue to grow, and improve their own operations as well.
Going back to the Hope Home Care acquisitions, at the time you said that one of the things that attracted LiveWell Partners to that company was its previous success with managed Medicaid patients. Can you talk about how this helps your company embrace payer flexibility — I know this is a big goal for LiveWell Partners.
When we think about organic revenue growth, we think about establishing partnerships with solid referral sources and partners. We know that a lot of times our referral partners can’t just give us traditional Medicare that most of the market seeks today. Taking it back to [Hope Home Care] what I referenced a few minutes ago was attractive payer contracts, and that’s something that Hope Home Care has been able to successfully do. The need to successfully manage patients outside of traditional Medicare isn’t going away. We view managed Medicaid as a growing market in terms of importance for us and for the industry in general. Hope Home Care is a great example of what I discussed earlier. The agency was able to successfully leverage its quality outcomes to improve payment rates outside of traditional Medicare, thereby improving its business performance. We continue to work with them and seek opportunities to use the great quality outcomes and patient experiences that Hope Home Care provides, in addition to our other branches and agencies, to negotiate favorable contracts outside of traditional Medicare.
Let’s talk more about “payer flexibility.” Ultimately, what does this mean for LiveWell Partners?
We define payer flexibility as the ability to accept patients from our referral partners, regardless of insurance. We recognize that our referral partners have home health needs for patients with a wide range of insurances. Our ability to willingly accept those patients beyond traditional Medicare is an important part of that referral relationship.
Don’t get me wrong, we understand the traditional way the home health business has been operationally and financially successful in terms of the payer mix. We’re regularly working with our sales team and our sales leaders to optimize that payer mix. We also just understand where the industry is headed and where the health care payer markets are headed, and we know that we’ll have to be successful at managing other patients with other payers as well.
I’ve heard other providers sometimes say that their goal is to be payer agnostic. Does that resonate with you and what you’re doing at LiveWell Partners?
I certainly understand where that comes from. Ideally, or aspirationally, that sounds great. What we regularly do is look at, what [is] our payer mix today? Are there opportunities to contract in a better way or pursue referrals in a different way, and work with our sales team and our operations team to better understand that and what the ideal mix is. Then, from a centralized contracting perspective, being proactive on a periodic basis, engaging with our payer partners, to understand their needs and protect our reimbursement rates as well.
Are partnerships a big part of your company? Any innovative partnership you have going on, and how has this helped your company?
Yes, I think I’ve used the word partnerships maybe a dozen or so times so far in this conversation. Partnerships are, obviously, a big part of our company, whether it’s our partners in terms of our colleagues, referral partners, that we’re working to successfully manage patients together, or payer partners. Home care is a team sport. One of our core values is collaboration, and we take that really to heart to make sure that we’re collaborating not only with the patient and his or her family, but across the care continuum to make sure that we’re focused on delivering great outcomes.
Technology is another important partnership for us, whether it’s our EMR partner, CRM partner, whatever the case may be. As it relates to innovative partnerships, artificial intelligence, or AI, is something that I’m thinking a lot about right now and thinking about how we can invest in AI, such that our teammates’ jobs are a little bit easier, their work life balance is a little more in check. We’re starting some preliminary conversations with a few folks. We haven’t made any significant investments in this area yet, but I hope that we’re in a position to do that in the near future.
Are there any untapped opportunities in home-based care that you believe not enough providers are engaging in? Any plans to lean into any of these opportunities? If so, how?
[Private] duty care, I think, is really in its infancy. Fortunately, the federal government approved the continuation of the hospital-at-home program, and I expect programs like that to be able to continue and grow and proliferate over time. I expect hospital-at-home and even a SNF-at-home program, something like that, to continue to grow. We’re working on putting the building blocks in place so that we can pursue those opportunities in the coming years.
Looking ahead, what are going to be the biggest financial drivers at LiveWell Partners over the next few years?
We’re spending a lot of time right now focused on how we continue to maintain and even expand our gross margins over time.
Much of that encompasses what we’ve already discussed, the right payer mix with delivering quality outcomes that are great for the patient, their families and our referral partners, and our ability to have mutually beneficial contracts over time, all based on the quality care we provide.
The other part that we haven’t really touched on yet is our clinical team. We’re investing in what we call the ‘LiveWell way,’ which to me really means establishing a culture across the company that lets our teammates know that we care about their success, both professionally and personally. This is across multiple facets, like competitive compensation, a superior day-to-day experience, professional development, career advancement opportunities and more. Through this, we’re reducing the turnover rate at our branches and reducing the revenue loss associated with employee turnover.
The post LiveWell Partners CEO: Being ‘Payer Flexible’ Is Key To Success As Home Health Evolves appeared first on Home Health Care News.
