Amedisys, Inc. operates as a healthcare services company.
The company’s operations involve serving patients across the United States through the company’s three operating divisions: Home Health, Hospice, and High Acuity Care. The company divested its personal care business on March 31, 2023.
The company delivers clinically distinct care that best suits its patients' needs, whether that is home-based recovery and rehabilitation after an operation or injury or care that empowers patients to mana...
Amedisys, Inc. operates as a healthcare services company.
The company’s operations involve serving patients across the United States through the company’s three operating divisions: Home Health, Hospice, and High Acuity Care. The company divested its personal care business on March 31, 2023.
The company delivers clinically distinct care that best suits its patients' needs, whether that is home-based recovery and rehabilitation after an operation or injury or care that empowers patients to manage a chronic disease through the company’s home health division, hospice care at the end of life or delivering the essential elements of inpatient hospital, palliative and skilled nursing facility (‘SNF’) care to patients in their homes through the company’s high acuity care division.
The company is among the largest providers of home health and hospice care in the United States, with employees in 521 care centers in 37 states within the United States and the District of Columbia. The company’s employees deliver the highest quality care performing more than 10.6 million visits for more than 469,000 patients annually. Over 3,000 hospitals and 110,000 physicians nationwide have chosen the company as a partner in post-acute care.
The company’s strategy is to be the best choice for care wherever the patients call home. The company accomplishes this by providing clinically distinct care, being the employer of choice and delivering operational excellence and efficiency, which when combined, drive growth.
Home Health
The company’s Home Health segment provides compassionate healthcare to help the company’s patients recover from surgery or illness, live with chronic diseases and prevent avoidable hospital readmissions. The company’s home health footprint includes 346 care centers located in 34 states within the United States and the District of Columbia. Within these care centers, the company deploys its care teams, which include skilled nurses who are trained, licensed and certified to administer medications, care for wounds, monitor vital signs and provide a wide range of other nursing services; rehabilitation therapists who specialize in physical, speech and occupational therapy; and social workers and aides who assist the company’s patients with completing important personal tasks.
The company takes an empowering approach to helping its patients and their families understand their medical conditions, how to manage them and how to maximize the quality of their lives while living with a chronic disease or other health condition. The company’s clinicians are trained to understand the whole patient – not just their medical diagnosis.
Hospice
Hospice care is designed to provide comfort and support for those who are dealing with a terminal illness. It is a benevolent form of care that promotes dignity and affirms quality of life for the patient, family members and other loved ones. Individuals with a terminal illness, such as cancer, heart disease, pulmonary disease or Alzheimer’s may be eligible for hospice care if they have a life expectancy of six months or less. The company’s hospice care teams include nurse practitioners and other skilled nurses, social workers, aides, bereavement counselors and chaplains.
The company’s focus is on building and retaining an exceptional team, delivering the highest quality care and service to the company’s patients and their families and establishing Amedisys as the preferred and preeminent hospice provider in each community the company serves. In order to realize these goals, the company invests in tailored training and development for its employees, which has led to its team’s consistent achievement at or above the national average in family satisfaction results and quality scores, as well as the trust of the healthcare community.
Another element of the company’s approach is the company’s outreach strategy to more fully engage the entire community of eligible patients. These outreach efforts have built the company’s hospice patient population to more accurately represent the causes of death in the communities the company serve, with a specific focus on heart disease, lung disease and dementia in order to address the historical underrepresentation of non-cancer diagnoses. By working to accept every eligible patient who seeks end-of-life care, the company fulfill the company’s hospice mission and strengthen the company’s standing in the community.
Personal Care
The company divested its personal care business on March 31, 2023. The company’s Personal Care segment provided assistance with the essential activities of daily living.
High Acuity Care
The acquisition of Contessa Health (‘Contessa’) on August 1, 2021 established the company’s High Acuity Care segment. The company’s High Acuity Care segment has the capability to deliver the essential elements of inpatient hospital, SNF care and palliative care to patients in their homes. In connection with the acquisition of Contessa, the company obtained interests in a professional corporation that employs clinicians and several joint ventures with health system partners. Additionally, the acquisition provided the company with an advanced claims analytic platform, network management and additional capabilities to enter into risk-based arrangements with managed care organizations.
The company’s joint venture partners in the high acuity care segment represent national and large regional healthcare systems, each of which view the ability to provide inpatient level care in patients’ homes as critical to relieving capacity constraints within their facilities, providing care in a more cost-effective setting and keeping patients engaged with their health system brand by providing a superior patient experience. The patients who utilize the company’s home-based recovery services typically have one or more chronic conditions that have historically required frequent emergency department visits and inpatient hospital stays.
The company provides management services to the joint ventures, which include the development and implementation of clinical protocols to ensure the safe and efficient delivery of services in the home and high quality outcomes; an internally-developed technology platform that provides medical documentation, analytics and claims processing capabilities; provider network development services to ensure that all care resources are available to meet patient needs; and expertise in developing and negotiating contracts with third-party health insurance payors to provide reimbursement for services under risk-based arrangements. The company’s expertise and capabilities in these areas deliver value to both the health system and the health insurance payor and give the company the opportunity for future expansion within the healthcare continuum for chronically ill patients, including palliative care services, especially as the U.S. population ages and consumer preferences continue to shift to home-based care. The company’s joint venture partnership model with leading healthcare systems and its relationships with health plan insurers facilitate the company’s ability to take and manage additional risk for this patient population in value-based arrangements.
On January 20, 2023, the company acquired the regulatory assets of a home health provider in West Virginia.
Regulatory Environment
The company’s home health and hospice subsidiaries are certified by CMS and therefore are subject to the rules and regulations of the Medicare system.
The company’s care centers must comply with regulations promulgated by the United States Department of Health and Human Services (‘HHS’) and CMS in order to participate in the Medicare program and receive Medicare payments.
As a provider under the Medicare and Medicaid programs, the company is subject to various anti-fraud and abuse laws, including the federal Anti-Kickback Statute, the Stark or Physician Self-Referral Law, the False Claims Act, Civil Monetary Penalties Law, and various state anti-fraud and abuse laws.
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (‘HIPAA’) requires the company to comply with standards for the exchange of health information within the company and with third parties, such as payors, business associates and patients. These include standards for common health care transactions, such as claims information, plan eligibility and payment information, standards for the use of electronic signatures and unique identifiers for providers, employers, health plans and individuals, as well as standards for privacy, security and breach notification and enforcement.
History
Amedisys, Inc. was founded in 1982. The company was incorporated in Louisiana in 1982.
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