Growth opportunities abound in the home healthcare staffing sector as rising healthcare costs back a push toward value-based care and the Covid-19 pandemic makes families leery of placing loved ones at residential facilities.

Cost control is the main driver of interest in home healthcare. Encouraged by the insurers and the public entities footing the bills, healthcare providers are looking for ways to lower costs — including reducing the length of hospital stays and avoiding readmissions. Home care can also streamline the discharge process.

Other forces pushing the long-term trend toward in-home care include advancements in technology and telehealth, as well as simply the preference of patients for receiving care in the comfort of their own homes instead of hospitals, rehabilitation or long-term care facilities.

“Home care resources are in extremely high demand as hospitals are pushing to discharge patients home, freeing up beds for more ICU capacity and the winter surge of Covid-19 cases,” said Jennifer Sheets, CEO and president of Interim HealthCare Inc., a home-care, hospice and healthcare staffing firm with more than 300 franchise locations in 41 states. “We’ve seen an increase in the need for skilled home health that’s nurse led. We’ve also seen an increase in our hospice business.”

Interim has seen an uptick in staffing needs with organizations seeking more home healthcare staff across a wide variety of client settings, Sheets told SIA. “There is an incredible demand from employers, small and large, for assistance in conducting Covid-19 screening and Covid-19 testing on a continual basis,” she said.

Home healthcare providers need a range of in-demand talent, and staffing providers that can deliver that talent will be in the catbird seat. Registered nurses are needed but difficult to secure given the current competition from hospitals and other healthcare facilities on the front lines of the Covid-19 pandemic. However, other home-care staff can be much easier to source, including physical therapists, occupational therapists, speech-language pathologists and those specializing in pediatric care. In addition, many home health agencies also provide hospice care and need providers skilled in end-of-life caregiving.

Looking forward, “home health and personal care aides” tops a US Bureau of Labor Statistics list of occupations with the most projected job growth from 2019 to 2029 at 33.7% and almost 1.2 million jobs.

But it’s not all rosy for home health.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on Jan. 1 launched a new case-mix classification model — the Patient-Driven Groupings Model — to reduce Medicare costs. PDGM was intended to remove incentives to overprovide therapy services and rely more heavily on patient clinical characteristics to align payments more closely with patients’ needs.

The financial incentives include higher rates for admitted beneficiaries after an inpatient institutional stay, such as at hospitals and skilled nursing facilities, HomeCare Magazine reported. Lower rates are provided for admitted beneficiaries from the community, such as hospital outpatients and hospital patients in observation status, along with beneficiaries who start care from their home without a prior inpatient institutional stay.

Many home health insiders expected historic consolidation due to the PDGM at some point during 2020, according to Home Health Care News. LHC Group — which offers home health, hospice and personal care services to patients in 35 states and Washington, DC and operates more than 110 hospice locations nationwide — still believes that is coming, or already underway, with Covid-19’s impact adding to it.

“We anticipate a historic consolidation opportunity in home health, and are seeing an increasing number of hospice opportunities in our pipeline,” said LHC Group Chairman and CEO Keith Myers. “We believe we are well-positioned for a strong finish in 2020 and a strong start in 2021.”

But Sheets urges caution for staffing providers looking to enter the segment for a quick buck. “Especially in healthcare, though it may seem lucrative to jump in — now more than ever, expertise and a proven track record are required to win and to drive growth in the pandemic recovery,” she said.