Our home care spotlight continues as we kickoff the 2023 Home Care Symposium, our virtual event featuring three days of educational content. On this episode of the MEDITECH podcast, I had the pleasure of speaking with one of our keynote speakers, Lindsay Doak, BerryDunn’s Director of Research. BerryDunn, a top 50 accounting firm, boasts a strong commitment to the advancement of healthcare through their services and dedicated home health and hospice team, who work with agencies to strengthen their care delivery methods and patient outcomes.
Doak spearheaded BerryDunn’s 2021 National Healthcare at Home Best Practices and Future Insights Study, which gathered a baseline of trends in home care to help examine current and prospective efforts. The study, sponsored by several industry-leading home care associations, focuses on key areas such as operation costs, recruitment, retention, technology, and palliative care through the perspectives of over 1,000 participants.
While BerryDunn initially concentrated on financial services in their over 35 years of working with agencies, the study has become a critical part of the company’s shift to advancing home care methods through research, education, and consulting work.
“We believe home health is the future of healthcare, and we want to help it grow,” says Doak.
The report dives into technology usage like the application of telehealth and the importance of interoperability for home care and hospice services, where a smooth continuum of care relies on communication through all parties involved in the patient’s care plan.
“We’re finding that organizations whose EHR communicated with hospitals had lower hospitalization rates, and those who had EHRs that communicated with physician offices had higher patient satisfaction rates,” elaborates Doak.
Since the study encompasses two and a half years of data, it also provides a comprehensive account of how home care has evolved after COVID-19 and current challenges such as staffing and workflow. Tune into the MEDITECH Podcast to hear more about the findings, Doak’s takeaways, and how her own experience in healthcare drives her passion for industry education.
Doak is our first keynote speaker at the Home Care Symposium, where she will outline key results from the study and how they’ve been successfully implemented in agencies. After our insightful conversation, it’s clear her passion will help set the tone for this event focused on enhancing, optimizing, and innovating home care solutions. Login to this virtual conference March 21-23, and reference the agenda to mark down the sessions best suited to your needs. We’ll “see” you there!
