ALEXANDRIA, Virgina—The 2024 National Home Infusion Association Annual Conference (NHIA 2024) was held in late March, which brings together more than 1,600 home and alternate site infusion professionals for four days of networking, education, and exhibits. This year’s event saw significant growth in attendance and exhibits over prior years and the expo featured more than 135 companies displaying the latest products and services supporting the industry.
NHIA 2024 speakers and poster authors shared a variety of perspectives on the regulatory landscape and the latest trends in patient care. NHIA President and CEO Connie Sullivan set the tone for the event, sharing trendlines and insights on the future of the infusion market and NHIA’s key initiatives. Encouraged by a 5-8% increase in home infusion service claims for 2023, NHIA continues its outreach efforts to commercial payors to reduce administrative burden and improve access to care. The association made a second series of specific commercial payer recommendations that can be included in provider contracts.
Contrasting growth in the commercial sector with the latest utilization data from Part B Medicare home infusion therapy (HIT) benefit reveals inadequate access to HIT services for beneficiaries, according to Sullivan. NHIA estimates that only 14% of eligible providers participate in the program with a handful of companies servicing more than half of the patients who receive services. NHIA will continue to dialogue with CMS about the poor uptake and has just launched a grassroots letter-writing campaign in support of the Preserving Patient Access to Home Infusion Act as a solution for improving access.
While the Preserving Patient Access to Home Infusion Act addresses the narrow problem of coverage for medications administered by infusion pump—37 drugs—it’s an important precedent, according to McCarthy.
“There are approximately 300 infusion drugs that can be administered in the home, but most don’t require a pump. We want to ensure that coverage for them also includes the supplies and pharmacy services necessary for safe, effective treatment," McCarthy said.
NHIA also shared plans to develop a list of drugs that can be infused in the home site of care. Such a comprehensive list can serve as a resource for payers, regulators and referring clinicians.
Ninth Secretary of Veterans Affairs David J. Shulkin, M.D. shared lessons learned during his time in public service leading the largest integrated health care system in the country, including policy measures relevant to improving access to home infusion. Shulkin shared his belief in providing full practice authority to pharmacists and nurses as well as encouraging heath care to move into the home—both policies he ushered during his time leading the VA. It was his firm stand that, “no veteran should ever have to leave their home for health issues if they didn’t want to.” He also shared figures showing that total cost of care per patient to the government was cut in half when care was moved to the home.
Education & Training
NHIA hosted its Sterile Compounding Clinic, which features hands-on training in a simulated clean room environment in an exclusive area in the NHIA Expo Hall. Participants alternate between this optional lab time and dedicated education by leading experts in the area.
Brand new interactive workshops provided more engaging learning opportunities at the end of several full days of education. One session provided compounding scenarios and asked attendees to assign Beyond Use Dates (BUDs) via an online polling platform. This was followed by lessons in procedures for environmental monitoring and examples of how to count colony forming units (CFUs) on contact plates. Attendees were provided sample plates and markers to practice counting using different examples and confirm the actual results.
Another session ran through billing case studies asking groups which decisions they would make at various steps in the process, such as when to file for reconsideration and why. Participant responses were then compared to the real-life outcomes.
Recognizing Excellence
NHIA recognized infusion patient advocate Shane Bare as the NHIA Infusion Change Maker. Shane has not only advocated for himself countless times and continues to persevere after tragedy and rare disease, but he has been instrumental in sharing his story to advocate for policies that improve access to home infusion.
NHIA also presented its Exhibitor Innovation Award Eitan Medical for Eitan Insights, a cloud-based digital health software suite that captures and analyzes pump data. Insights can receive data remotely from the Avoset pump or with the Sapphire Infusion pump through Sapphire Connect, a plug-and-play universal cellular communication accessory.
The National Home Infusion Foundation recognized outstanding research among more than 30 abstracts presented at this year’s conference. Yoselin Flores, a PGY-1 Resident at Option Care Health, was selected as the winner of the NHIF Outstanding Abstract Achievement Award for her poster, “Use of a Lipid Screening Tool to Identify Patients at Greater Risk of Infusion Reactions to Lipids in the Home Setting.” The winning abstract, which includes $1,000 grant and the opportunity to publish a full manuscript in Infusion Journal, must be relevant to a current challenge, issue, or question facing the infusion industry; employ an effective study design/methodology to achieve results; and have the ability for expansion into a larger study. Honorable mention was awarded to Katherine Yang, PharmD, BCPS from Kaiser Permanente for “Daptomycin vs. Vancomycin: A Cost Comparison in a Regional Home Infusion Pharmacy.”
