Partnering with Providers a Common Theme at ALFA

Cory Rutledge, Partner, CliftonLarsenAllen LLP shared strategies for assisted living providers to position themselves as vital health care partners to other health care entities particularly hospitals in a breakout session at the Assisted Living Federation of America (ALFA) annual conference.

In reviewing the tenets of health care form, he made two important points. In the future, site of service will not matter. And the implications of reform on hospitals has a trickle-down effect on aging services providers.

We have noted in past blogs that with 6,000 or so hospitals in the U.S. and some 18,000 each of assisted living and nursing homes, not all providers will become preferred partners of hospitals in an ACO model. Rutledge emphasized this, so it is about positioning YOUR organization as the preferred partner.

Good partners will have good quality, a patient centered approach to care and lower costs.

Despite an influx of insured patients if the individual mandate holds, hospitals will experience financial strain over the next 5-7 years. And that means more discharges to the lowest cost setting, particularly under a bundled payment scenario. Earlier in the conference it was shared that assisted living has a four percent lower cost of care. So the industry could be well-positioned as a partner even if the reality today is that SNFs are still a hospital's first choice. And of course that is both a payment issue as well as a regulatory issue, particularly in states that do not embrace "enhanced" assisted living.

Implications for assisted living include assuming more financial risk, being operationally efficient, be willing to collaborate, adopt technology, increase and measure quality, and understand that home and community based services are where care is being pushed.

Among the strategies he shared to assist providers were:

Bend the Cost Curve
First understand your costs then using Lean and Six Sigma, look at processes and reduce waste.

Focus on Residents Not Process
I think key here is using empathy and common sense while knowing you have certain tasks to do and regulations to follow.

Connect Quality to Value
It will be important to start looking at apples to apples metrics especially with much talk at ALFA about being strategic partners to hospitals. Metrics around cost, readmission, medication compliance, medication errors will start to get their attention. Speak their language.

Build Relationships
Key distinction here from past discussions was to build C-suite relationships not just relationships with discharge planners.

Rutledge also suggest participants think about going slow to go fast that is take time to ponder how to create a burning platform for change. He said participation in the change is not a choice. Accept this or be left behind.

He also forecasted that future customer buying practices will likely not reflect historical trends. People will not want or afford the bells and whistles. They will want value for their money. That will call for new value propositions and therefore new marketing messages.

And he reminded attendees that many people will be opting to stay in their own homes.

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