2024 Wrapped: Our Top Stories & Insights

Dina Digest is our monthly round-up of insights and industry news impacting health plans and providers on their journey to improve access to in-home care, LTSS, and supplemental benefits.

As we enter the final stretch of 2024 and the start of the holiday season, we want to thank our customers, partners, and friends for their support and collaboration. It’s been an exciting year of growth and innovation, and we’re looking forward to continuing our mission of improving access and transparency for home-centered services and benefits.

Here is a roundup of our top stories for the year. Thanks for reading and see you in 2025! 

👉 How to Improve Access to Home-Based Services

👉 “80-20” Provision Raises Concerns About Access to Home Care

👉 Future of MA: 5 Trends to Manage Costs

👉 Rising Medical Expenses? How to Use Supplemental Benefits to Improve Quality, Outcomes & Costs

👉 Sherman Sanchez Joins Dina!

👉 New Integration & Automation Capabilities Accelerate Access to Care

Ready to jump in? Keep scrolling 👇

How to Improve Access to Home-Based Services

With so many growth strategies tied to leveraging home-based care, improving reliable (and transparent) access to care has become a priority for health plans. At the same time, homecare organizations are battling frequent staff turnover, which creates a major access challenge.

As health plans navigate this difficult landscape, the Dina team shares strategies for improving efficiency, ensuring network adequacy, and managing out-of-network expenses.

📄 Read what the team had to say

“80-20” Provision Raises Concerns About Access to Home Care

The “80-20” provision has raised concerns about access to home care. Home care agencies feel the 80/20 rule will force many companies to close their doors and go out of business, further worsening the access to home care for Medicaid members. 

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services believes this is a way to bring more caregivers into the profession to meet the demands of a growing Medicaid segment that needs home care.

Says Sherman Sanchez: “One of the many motivators for passing the rule is the potential to delay progression to long-term care facilities by providing more care in the home and reducing total spend. We believe technology has a role to play here to help create efficiencies and grow capacity.”

There is encouraging data that shows that a Medicaid member stay in their home for 21 months longer versus moving into a nursing home when the appropriate home-based services and interventions are activated.

Future of MA: 5 Trends to Manage Costs

Health insurers are navigating an aging population, regulatory changes, and changing member preferences. 

To keep pace with the market, the Medicare Advantage program is undergoing its biggest shifts in more than two decades.

A recent McKinsey & Company report identifies 5 key trends insurers in the Medicare Advantage space need to consider in the next year to manage costs and meet growth objectives.

📄 Learn more

Rising Medical Expenses? How to Use Supplemental Benefits to Improve Quality, Outcomes & Costs

There is increasing pressure from CMS to deliver non-medical and home-based supplemental benefits in a high-quality, low-cost manner. But the environment to do that is challenging. If your first response is to cut benefits, we have a different approach. 

Our new report “Rising Medical Expenses? How to Use Supplemental Benefits to Manage Total Cost of Care” shows there is value to be gained by more efficiently deploying benefits. In this report, we take you through the steps to drive smart utilization of non-medical benefits to address your value-based care objectives. 

Ready to take another look at your supplemental benefits? Follow the link to download the report.

📄 Read the report

Sherman Sanchez Joins Dina!

Earlier this year, Sherman Sanchez joined the Dina team as president to accelerate our national expansion strategy and he is already making an impact.  

Sherman has a long history of growth and transformation across the healthcare ecosystem that includes driving commercialization efforts with a deep focus on top-line growth.

“Sherman has extensive experience working with payers and providers that want to leverage digital solutions to improve home-based care. He will be a valuable leader as we embark on the next phase of our growth journey.” - Ashish V. Shah, CEO, Dina.

Welcome to the team Sherman!

📄 Read more

New Integration & Automation Capabilities Accelerate Access to Care

Providing timely access to care is a massive problem. For health plans and providers, the process involves intricate workflows, multiple healthcare IT systems, and continuous communication with many providers. To reduce this complexity, Dina has made two significant updates to its platform. 

1️⃣ First, Dina launched a suite of new capabilities within its integration toolkit–the Dina API–to streamline the integration of utilization management and care management systems.

2️⃣ Next, building on the embedded nature of the Dina API, a new workflow automation engine was created to accelerate the traditional steps in the coordination process.

📄 Read the article

That's everything for now. See you next year! 👋

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