In August, Integrated Home Care Services, Inc., an independent administrator of home health, durable medical equipment (DME) and home infusion benefits, announced a new CEO, Christopher Bradbury. Bradbury succeeded Jorge Pereda, co-founder.
Founded in 2015, IHCS currently serves the homecare needs of more than 2 million patients through partnerships with health plans and risk bearing provider organizations across the nation. The company anticipates serving more than 3 million patient lives under a value-based model by the end of 2023.
Prior to joining IHCS, Bradbury served as a senior vice president at CVS Health, where he led Aetna's commercial solutions and multi-billion-dollar portfolio of specialty businesses. He also previously served as president of Aetna's North Atlantic territory, including commercial and Medicare.
He recently sat down with HomeCare to share his thoughts on his new role and the industry.
HOMECARE: What drew you to Integrated Home Care Services? How does the company’s model align with your personal values and beliefs?
BRADBURY: Helping individuals (and their families) that have chronic and complex health conditions has always been at the center of my professional and personal choices over the years. Health care in the United States does remarkable things. At the same time, health care to many individuals feels too complex, confusing, costly and not centered on meeting their needs and priorities. As my family, friends and those in my community have aged or experienced significant health events, I have seen firsthand the importance and benefits of enabling individuals to receive care and support in their homes. Integrated Home Care Services is dedicated to helping individuals receive the highest quality of care in their home, through home health/care, home infusion, DME or orthotics and prosthetics (O&P) services. So, the solutions are very personal to me. Our colleagues put the patient first in everything we do. The combination of a purpose and performance-based culture enables us to deliver on our commitments to patients, providers and clients every day. So, when we make company commitments, they are personal commitments. As we support our patients, we do so in a manner as if they were family members. These are just a few of the reasons why I feel lucky to be part of IHCS.
HOMECARE: Value-based care is such a nebulous term that I think the industry is still coming to grips with it. What does it mean to you?
BRADBURY: Value-based care means different things to different people and organizations. For me, it is about identifying, aligning on and achieving clear, measurable outcomes that are critical from the patient’s viewpoint. Similarly, it is about identifying, fully aligning on and achieving clear, measurable outcomes from a provider’s and payer’s perspective. Then, execute your care and support to achieve significant improvements in these outcomes. At the same time, the best value-based model fully aligns financial incentives to achieve superior quality of care, improved affordability and satisfaction. At IHCS, we are committed to value-based care, and go full risk tailored to our client’s needs across clinical, utilization, cost and satisfaction performance.
HOMECARE: IHCS blends home health and DME services. Why do these two parts of the industry work well together, and how can cooperation improve?
BRADBURY: The majority of our patients require complex support across home health, home infusion and DME. Five in 10 home health recipients require DME, two in 10 DME recipients will require home health and eight in 10 home infusion patients will require home health and DME respectively. Simply put, traditional coordination isn’t enough for these patients. These patients and the treating providers need a fully integrated approach that is accountable for supporting the whole patient in transitioning to home, living the highest quality of life in their home, while keeping care affordable. The prevalence of these multiple needs represents a huge opportunity to simplify the health care process for the patient, their families, providers and payers. This is what our IHCS team members do every day—put the patient first, make health care easy and ensure all of their needs are met. These patients need a trusted ally that has their back, and delivers seamless, integrated support across these many needs. This is what our IHCS team does every day, and why we serve over 2 million members today. Our payer clients and other risk bearing provider organizations also need a trusted ally that fully aligns around value-based care to accelerate their strategies, and lower costs through significantly improved quality of care.
HOMECARE: What’s on the horizon for IHCS?
BRADBURY: IHCS has the privilege to serve over 2 million individuals. We are proud of the impact we make everyday with every patient and their family. That said, we are committed to continuous improvement. With this in mind, we are investing heavily in technology and innovation to continue to improve outcomes, make health care even easier, improve affordability of health care and partner with our clients to accelerate their strategies. We are expanding to more than a handful of new states at the beginning of the year. We are also investing in our data insights to unlock additional value for our patients and clients. It is an exciting time for our team.
HOMECARE: What does the future of care in the home look like to you?
BRADBURY: The prevalence and scope of care in the home will continue to expand, based on patient preference, as well as proven clinical outcomes, satisfaction and affordability. Advances in treatment and technology are enabling this shift at an accelerating pace. It will be more digitally and virtually connected as well as AI/data insights driven. There is a lot of competition with different approaches. That is a good thing, as it requires all of us to innovate at an even higher rate which benefits patients. We also believe it will become easier for payers and provider organizations to determine their partner of choice to accelerate their strategies. Compared to traditional homecare models, an integrated homecare approach, with passionate care providers, leading technology and aligned financial model is well positioned to drive breakthrough outcomes and significant affordability improvements while making health care easier for those that need it most.
