Humana Wants More Profit from Kindred at Home

Strange Tony,

Humana CEO Bruce Broussard informed Wall Street analysts of plans to build a longitudinal health record.

This year, we'll be bringing on all of Kindred in that relationship as a result of them completing their EMR install.

In the home, we advanced our transformational home health initiative with Kindred at Home and Curo through the implementation of a company-wide EMR and the extrapolation of best practices for our [indiscernible] over 20,000 home health episodes.

The next phase beginning in 2020 is to provide more care services in the home, including acute care and primary care in the home, so that we may begin to generate meaningful trend vendors for our health plans in the future while improving clinical outcomes for our seniors.

Homecare Homebase's cumbersome, complex software requires multiple workarounds.  It turned into "garbage in/garbage out" as nurses refuse to check any boxes that might take them on a clinical rabbit trail.  The narrative summary is the only place to find pertinent clinical information.  It resides nowhere else in HCHB's twisted bowels.

On measure after measure our hospice is far worse under Broussard's greedy leadership.  Humana implemented a littany of worst practices.  The system robs staff of fair pay for hours worked and miles driven. That is not a best practice. It's abusive.

Humana CFO Brian Kane mentioned Kindred at Home several times in the recent earnings call with Wall Street analysts.

For Healthcare Services, we had a strong year as we saw growth in our pharmacy business, solid performance of Kindred at Home and continued improvement in our Conviva operations, partially offset by the cost incurred to continue to expand our owned JV and Alliance senior-focused primary care centers.

Our home business is also anticipated to perform well led by Kindred at Home in which the conversion to Homecare Homebase across home health and hospice in 2019 weighed on results due to the significant required one-time investment, but will drive EBITDA in 2020.

Kindred at Home is also performing well. We hope to continue to see strong EBITDA growth, not withstanding the change in the payment model.

I'm not sure what else Brian Kane can do to drive EBITDA growth.  Humana and its financial rapscallion partners already depopulated our hospice staff.  Caring people quit or were targeted for elimination by the Mean Girl managers, local and regional.

Humana executives want higher earnings and Medicare Advantage cost savings from Kindred at Home.  Greedy executives rely on complex, unreliable technology while abusing actual caregivers.  Broussard and Kane want profit growth and they don't care who gets hurt in that pursuit.

Anonymous

Hospice Staff Should Prepare to be Leveraged

Strange Tony,

"Home Healthcare News" interviewed Humana at Home President Kirk Allen.  One question targeted Humana at Home's plans for Kindred at Home, a company 40% owned by Humana.

"We have learned that there is a real depth in the clinical relationship that exists between the hospice care providers and the hospice patient and the patient’s family, as well as how holistic the benefits of hospice are. There is a medical component. There is a spiritual component. There is bereavement care for the family following the patient’s death.'

'We are learning to take a look at those interactions and consider how we can leverage that time we spend with the [Humana] member in their homes, and how we can take full advantage of that moment of influence to really help serve that member."

That depth in clinical relationship resulted in a huge pay cut for our hospice's nurse practitioner. Evolution Health implemented a similar move just prior to Kirk Allen joining the company.

The company decided to cut NP pay for an entire group of NPs. This decision was announced by email. There was no warning, no meeting, no telephone call. There was just an email stating "we are reducing your pay per visit and IF you do not sign a new contract in one week we will quit assigning you patients". For me it was a 29% pay cut. I am not sure how much of a pay cut it was for the other NPs. Several NPs quit immediately because they did not have a contract that protected them.

Humana and its financial rapscallion partners continue shedding jobs at our hospice.  Every few months they eliminate a position and overload the few remaining office staff.  Our census is roughly the same as summer 2018 when we were sold down the river.  Homecare Homebase continues to be cumbersome and overly time consuming.  Staff continue to work hours and drive miles for which they are not paid.  What kind of leaders would do that to their people?  Snakes in Suits.

"Psychopaths manipulate others to accrue power, sometimes pitting them against each other in an attempt to divide and conquer. They are often attracted to bigger, dynamic corporations with very little structure or supervision. They generally don’t work well in teams because they don’t like to share information or skills and it brings them joy to watch others fail. They are addicted to power, status and money. Sound familiar?

The corporate world is set up to favor psychopathic traits such as fearlessness, dominant behavior and immunity to stress. Because of this, psychopaths often find themselves in these types of positions, and then have an easier time climbing the corporate ladder and obtaining positions of great power. This is where they can do real damage to society as we see it today."

Kindred at Home executives have skin in the game, i.e. an ownership stake in the company.  They will make a king's ransom when Humana buys the rest of the company from TPG Capital and Welsh, Carson, Anderson and Stowe.  They stand to make more by robbing the people who do the clinical and office support work.  Pathological, earthly leaders are widespread in healthcare as more and more companies come under the ownership of financial rapscallions.  Greed is omnipresent and it kills.

Anonymous