Brent Korte was Chief Home Care Officer for over eight years at EvergreenHealth Home Care, based in Washington. During that time, it has gone from being a home health care institution that was a financial drag on the hospital system to becoming an integral part of the hospital system.
Now Korte is embarking on a new adventure as the leader of a new home healthcare organization called Frontpoint Health. The company just closed its first deal recently, and Korte hopes the acquisition will be the first step in its nationwide expansion.
There’s a reason Corte goes on one adventure after another, eventually moving his family and co-leader to another part of the country. Frontpoint Health is not like any other home care provider, nor is it like EvergreenHealth Home Care.
Medicare Advantage (MA) plans are often painful for home care providers. Some even refused to work with them. But Frontpoint Health does the opposite.
In fact, this is the spirit behind Frontpoint. It is a home health care agency specializing in MA and does not rely on Medicare fees for services as its primary source of income.
“We want to take a conversation with Medicare Advantage and provide them with the data and make sure that proper payments are made,” Corte told Home Health Care News. We are ready to approach MA with our current cost structure.”
Frontpoint currently has three locations. One Point Health is a home health care organization in Dallas with a census of 2,200 patients. Dignity Hospice, also based in Dallas. Highland Hospice in Houston. Korte described his two of the latter as “medium-sized hospices.”
Frontpoint is backed by Park City, Utah-based Tacoma Holdings and Utah-based Cimarron Healthcare Capital. The only investment listed on his website for Tacoma is JQ Medical Supply, his DME supplier for homes. Cimarron, meanwhile, is currently investing in behavioral health providers Ascent and Infusion Management, among others.
Frontpoint Health’s leadership team currently consists of three EvergreenHealth veterans: Korte, Molly McDonald, and Alex Van Gundy. McDonald previously served as Program Manager for Quality and Regulatory Compliance at EvergreenHealth Home Care, and now she is Vice President of Compliance and Quality Improvement at Frontpoint. Van Gundy will be the manager of fata and business analytics.
Why start with Dallas
Dallas, a crowded home healthcare market, was chosen as the starting point for Frontpoint for two reasons. Dallas has some very large providers, but there are also many smaller ones that struggle to “stand out.” Korte believes Frontpoint can differentiate himself in two ways. The first is by quality and patient experience.
“This may seem like a boilerplate answer, but there are many more home health providers within a two-mile radius. [One Point Health] More than the entire state of Washington,” Corte said. “There is quality dilution and the temporary nature of staff. Our goal is to retain staff and double the quality and patient experience.”
And the second is the aforementioned MA strategy, where very few home healthcare providers are operating in the region.
“We want to pursue the Medicare advantage,” Corte said. “This doesn’t mean you get an MA, it just means it’s traditional Medicare with a home care focus. We accept MA patients and partner with these MA plans to help patients Our focus is on adding value to hospitals and healthcare systems by seeking out and ultimately creating value.”
Frontpoint relies on de novo as well as acquisitions. For these new locations, we are eyeing markets like San Antonio, Houston, Austin and Waco, Texas.
“We’re going to know exactly what utilization we’ll see in a particular area before we go in, and we’re not going to areas that already have excellent care,” said Korte. “But this is going to be a goal I’m obsessed with. We want to be the best employer of home health and hospice clinicians and support staff.”
The Future of Frontpoint Health
Korte’s performance with EvergreenHealth at McDonald’s and Van Gundy’s for that matter has been impressive.
“What we really did was transform Evergreen from being in the red to being one of the most productive departments or divisions within the hospital,” says Corte. “Home health care is a big part of the system’s revenue, and that’s something we’re really proud of. There is none.”
Going forward, Linda Brabant will become Executive Director of EvergreenHealth Home Care. Korte couldn’t help but say “we” when referring to EvergreenHealth.
But now that he’s transitioning from a non-profit agency to a PE-backed agency, he stressed that he doesn’t want Frontpoint to get the label of “just another PE-backed provider.”
Working with MA to pave the way for profit may seem like a paradoxical strategy for some home care providers, but Korte and his partners are committed to MA-focused execution. We are confident in our ability to build a viable national business.
“We want to be their go-to, we want to prove that we are worth a better rate, we want to partner directly with the plan, we want to partner directly with the health system for capacity and quality. “Other than the fact that no one has actually done it, there’s nothing groundbreaking.”
The plan is to start in Texas, increase the density, then move to other parts of the country to do the same. However, organizations acquired by Frontpoint will not be rebranded. The goal is to centralize the focus of MA while maintaining hyperlocalization at the provider level.
“We may not even go for a single EMR,” Corte said. It’s about creating a lot of volume.”
Various MA strategies
Health care providers, especially in recent years, have been tough on how MA plans pay for home care services.
Some providers are deprioritizing MA patients due to staffing constraints and sub-plan charges. Still, large providers have made it clear that they want to flesh things out in their MA plans to form a more viable relationship in the future.
At the same time, there are examples of providers taking a more “proactive” approach than Frontpoint.
For example, private equity-backed Tennessee-based HomeFirst Home Healthcare adjusted its operations to address the fact that there are far more MA beneficiaries in the markets it serves. .
HomeFirst president and CEO Jim Happ told HHCN in June: “In order to generate profits, we need to align ourselves towards payments.
Korte subscribes to the same logic, making him the right person to lead Frontpoint.
His company believes that the best course of action is to adapt rather than resist. Only time will tell if Frontpoint’s approach is correct.
“When you look at the evolution of Medicare Advantage and the fact that it’s a tsunami, if you’re not in it, you’re about to be sucked into that tsunami,” Corte said. and are ready to grow the organization to new levels of efficiency and value, it will be wiped out and will not have a long future.”
Comments
Post a Comment