The Future Leaders Awards program is brought to you in partnership with Homecare Homebase. The program is designed to recognize up-and-coming industry members who are shaping the next decade of home health, hospice care, senior housing, skilled nursing, and behavioral health. To see this year’s Future Leaders, visit https://futureleaders.agingmedia.com/.
Michael Martin, VP of Network Management at tango, has been named a 2024 Future Leader by Home Health Care News.
To become a Future Leader, an individual is nominated by their peers. The candidate must be a high-performing employee who is 40 years old or younger, a passionate worker who knows how to put vision into action, and an advocate for seniors, and the committed professionals who ensure their wellbeing.
Martin sat down with Home Health Care News to discuss how reimbursement structures can positively change the future of home health care.
What drew you to this industry?
My mother has worked for post-acute and home health companies for several decades. I was exposed to that at a very early age.
So when I came of age and was able to come around her office, I got a chance to get additional exposure that way. I always had just an understanding of the health care industry, specifically the post-acute industry, through her. After college, I kind of experimented in sales and a few other industries, but I just fell back on what I knew, which was home health. And so my first job, my first real salary position, was working for a home health company. And my career took off from there.
What’s your biggest lesson learned since starting to work in this industry?
The biggest lesson that I’ve learned is that if you are wanting to transform the way providers service their members, I think you have to take a hard look at how they’re reimbursed.
Sitting on this side, where I oversee a network of providers, it’s really important that the way we reimburse providers shifts behaviors towards outcomes versus anything else. I learned that lesson working for VillageCare, where I oversaw their bundled payment program, and I just watched how that transformed the entire facility. I helped manage that program on their behalf, and at the time, I think they were managing about 11 bundles.
And you just saw how a capitated payment model, where you’re taking full risk, changes things. You see discharge, length of stay drop. You see partnerships in the community improve, things like starting the discharge planning process at the point of admission became a familiar sight. And it improved outcomes in a major way.
If you could change one thing with an eye toward the future of home health care, what would it be?
I would change the way providers are reimbursed. If I could, I would orient them all to ideally a full-risk arrangement, and at the very least, an upside arrangement, where they’re getting bonuses based on the value that they’re creating.
In a word, how would you describe the future of home health care?
Bright.
What quality must all Future Leaders possess?
I think it’s multifaceted, but I would say patience and empathy, those are incredibly important. It’s important that we have diverse backgrounds. I think that although the future is bright, we live in a very fragmented environment. And I think that just health care in general is very complicated for the common person. It’s also very dynamic and complicated to health care professionals.
It’s changing all the time, and if you get too lax, you get left behind. Leaders that are at the forefront of this, that are able to keep up, and frankly, pave new paths, have to have the patience to bring everyone else up to speed. And part of that is being empathetic about not only your team, but your clients, your partners in the community – putting yourself in their shoes. That’s vital for any sort of innovation.
To learn more about the Future Leaders program, visit https://futureleaders.agingmedia.com/.