LHC
Jane Austen wrote, “There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort LHC would agree that she knew what she was talking about. In fact, it’s their mantra. LHC Group is a home healthcare provider founded in the small town of Palmetta, Louisiana, and has grown to have centers in 18 states nation-wide. LHC Group offers a variety of services primarily for the elderly community including home healthcare, hospice, inpatient and outpatient rehabilitation, long-term acute care, private duty nursing, diabetes self-management, and wound care. The team is made up of dedicated healthcare professionals committed to serving the needs of their patients. Home is at the center of everything LHC does. It was named after its home state of Louisiana, and the company is proud of its deep roots in the community there.
LHC group started, aptly enough, at the home of Chief Executive Officer Keith Myer and his wife Ginger’s home. “We started the company at the kitchen table at home, when Ginger, a registered nurse, hired the first employee,” says Myers. The mission was to create a “family oriented culture that really focuses on the caring and service that are provided, and that comes before everything else.” The model was successful, and soon the company grew to a couple hundred employees in a few years. By 1998, LHC had expanded bigger than what the kitchen table could handle.
Reimbursement changes create opportunity
The home care industry changed the way it was reimbursed for Medicare services that year, in 1998. Congress and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services CMS enacted laws that would move the home health industry from cost reimbursed- which posed no risk from agencies- to a system where you are paid a set fee and the onus is on the agency to make or lose money. The effect was substantial. This shift caused over half of the agencies in the country to either go out of business or restructure in some form. Myers contributes this to the challenges of providing healthcare while at the same time running the business. “For the most part, home healthcare is run by nurses like my wife with not a lot of business or financing skills,” he says. “There was no consolidation in the industry. This created a huge opportunity for us. At that time we put together a team and brought in financing and began to take advantage of opportunities out there.”
A key member of that team, one whom Myers says made the biggest difference, is John Indest, who came on as Chief Operating Office in 1998. John, or Johnny, Indest had been in the industry for 20 years and is one of the most respected operators in the country. This was a time of great, supervened expansion; LHC was able to seize opportunities when other agencies were desperate to sell or be absorbed by a bigger company. In fact, in two cases, community hospitals paid LHC to come in and take over their home health care.
Continuity-of- care
LHC Group is now one of the largest providers of home nursing services in the United States. But the caregiver-patient relationship remains the nucleus of the company and is established at the highest level of LHC Group. “When Johnny Indest came in, he was a nurse who took the reins, so there was always a nurse in charge of nurses and today our COO is another nurse,” says Myer. “That’s unique about our company. You don’t see that in other companies that do what we do. It really makes a difference in the experience patient’s have because, instead of having a financial person in charge of what nurses do every day, you have a real caregiver”.
Never was this patient-first model more evident than when I asked Mr. Myers to describe to me a typical experience a patient might have. His discomfort at describing his patients in terms of statistics was evident. He proceeded to answer my question, saying he felt it was “dehumanizing to put these people in statistical buckets, if you will.” He did, however, tell me that his patients usually require his services about three to five times during the aging process. For example, a patient may initially need assistance in recovering from the flu. “In that instance, they would be receiving help in recovery until they are well,” Myer adds. “But then we have a relationship with them. And then the following year, if they need healthcare, we can come back for the recuperation.”
Home healthcare leads to a greater continuity- of- care, the effects of which are a greater familiarity of the individual condition of a patient which leads to more tailored and personal care than episodic, hospital visits. Myer continues, “Everyone understands that home healthcare is the most affordable and most effective way of managing the chronic populations. What we do is manage them at home and keep them out of more costly institutional settings and unnecessary trips to hospitals.”
Expansion
Current tough economic times have forced cuts and margin compressions throughout the industry. Myers predicts this will force smaller providers to consolidate and again create opportunities for continued expansion. As LHC Group continues its growth trajectory, Myers maintains the mantra written out on his kitchen table: “to build a culture where people care about each other because that translates into a great sense of caring for the people we serve.” One home at a time.
del.icio.us
Digg
NewsVine
Mixx
FaceBook
Twitter
Email this article
Print
Plain text
