Long-Term Care at Home: The Technology and Tools You Need

Learn about the tools, expertise, and revenue opportunities for LTC-at-home programs.

There’s a growing need for long-term care (LTC) pharmacy services. Data from the Administration for Community Living website estimates that around 70% of people over 65 will require long-term care services at some point, with 20% needing it for longer than five years. And this cohort is growing, with the Population Reference Bureau projecting that the number of adults over age 65 will increase by 69% by 2060, from 56 million to over 94 million. The number of those 85 and older is projected to nearly triple, from almost 7 million in 2020 to 19 million by 2060.

Consider next that there were 1.6 million licensed LTC beds in the United States in 2020, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. What this adds up to is a real need for providing LTC services to people aging in their homes, which is in fact the preference of 77% of adults 50 and over, according to an AARP survey.

Community pharmacies are in the vanguard of healthcare provision to patients at home, and in fact some have been doing this for years now. While in the past this higher level of patient care at home has not been reimbursed at the same rates it would receive if the patients were residents in an LTC facility, even this is changing. Recent CMS guidelines mean that pharmacies that follow the right steps can now receive higher reimbursements for LTC-at-home services.

The Roots of LTC at Home

The good news is that it’s not a big leap for many pharmacies to participate successfully in the LTC-at-home market. For all three pharmacies we spoke with for this article, it has largely been a matter of leveraging existing technology and formalizing the care process and services they already offer. It is also important to work with partners to understand documentation, billing, and accreditation. And they have found a need to create new staff roles around LTC at home.