Dan Savitt, president and CEO sat down with Home Health Care News and other health care leaders to discuss some of the biggest challenges the industry will face in 2024.
Dan highlights that becoming the employer of choice for healthcare professionals is one of VNS Health’s biggest challenges going into 2024. “How do we, as an organization, become that employer of choice for any field clinician who wants to work in home- and community-based care,” he said during the webinar. “That’s not an easy nut to crack, so we’re continuing to focus on that.” One way that Dan is tackling these challenges is by partnering with nursing schools to widen the organization’s talent pool. “Many of us partner with nursing schools; it’s the right thing to do,” Dan said. “We have created a new partnership, which we’re excited about. As nurses roll through their program, they can specialize in home health. We delivered the curriculum over the last year and gave them new experiences in the field, so that we have better success with new grads.”
He notes how organizational support for new hires is crucial in the first 12-18 months. Once team members reach their 2 year mark within the organization, the likelihood they remain significantly increases.
Navigating the managed care landscape has also proven to be a challenge, particularly in New York. “We have a little bit of a unique opportunity in New York, because we have such a big market share, we ultimately had to use termination as a method by which to really get people to the table,” Dan said. Managing payer contract requirements has become an administrative burden and unsustainable for providers. “For every managed care organization, I typically have two or three relationships, one with commercial, one with Medicaid, and one with Medicare,” he said. “Multiply the number of managed care organizations by all their business lines, you’re talking about 15 to 20 relationships and administrative complexities. The no managed care, less managed care for organizations is going to be a lever that the industry will continue to pull because we really don’t have a lot of other levers at this point.”
