News Roundup June 5th, 2020

In this news roundup, we discuss the rise of home health care needs as well as the expansion of telehealth and telemedicine in 2020 amid the pandemic. On the subject of telehealth, Amwell formerly known as American Well, announced last month that it raised $194 million to help it keep up with skyrocketing demand for remote telehealth services.  Now it’s filing to go public later this year amid surging demands for telehealth services.

Read more on CNBC

Amwell CEO Ido Schoenberg told CNBC in May that the markets are being “very kind to companies like us” in the current environment.  “We don’t know how long it will last, and it’s possible the window for any type of funding might not be available quite soon,” Schoenberg said.

It has been known that home health agencies nationwide are juggling lower patient volumes and a lack of telehealth reimbursement during the pandemic.  They are also dealing with a low inventory and high priced personal protective equipment (PPE).  Once the dust settles, the home health care sector should be one of the very few to recover quickly post COVID-19. 

As witnessed by Nova Leap Health Corp. an international provider of skilled home care and home health care.  Nova Leap’s financials continue to improve despite a minor lull due to COVID-19.  In a recent move, Nova Leap have expanded their home care operations to the state of Ohio.

Read more on Nova Leap Health

“This is the first step of many future organic growth locations anticipated in the coming years”, stated Chris Dobbin, President & CEO of Nova Leap. 

HHAs have faced a decline in patient visits while the chaos of the pandemic began.  LHC Group, a home health, hospice and personal care services provider that operates in 35 states along with several other agencies experienced uncertainty of what was to be expected.  Fortunately, the census is rising back to pre-COVID-19.  Due to a high percentage of Covid-19 deaths that occurred at skilled nursing facilities, many agency owners along with LHC Group executives are convinced that the home health sector will be seeing a large percentage of those patients choose to be cared for at home.

Read more here: Home Healthcare News

Per Home Healthcare News, during the virtual Jefferies 2020 Healthcare Conference this week Greenstein said “[That’s going to change] the psyche of the way people are going to view SNFs and long-term care facilities for the rest of our generation”