TL;DR
At Home Health Care News’ FUTURE conference in August, Careforth CEO and executive chairman Paul Kusserow argued that home health must expand beyond episodic clinician visits. He described a model combining skilled services, paid and trained family caregivers, technology, and support for daily needs, while details of how broadly such a model could be adopted remain unclear.
Careforth CEO and executive chairman Paul Kusserow said home health providers need to move beyond a business model built around episodic clinician visits, combining skilled services with family caregiver support, technology and accountability for longer-term outcomes. Speaking at Home Health Care News’ FUTURE conference in August, he argued that the shift is needed to care for people living with chronic disease and to support patients at home over extended periods.
Kusserow described a model in which clinical visits remain part of care but are joined by help with daily activities, family and community caregiving, and attention to social needs. He said that broader approach is relevant for providers seeking to care for medically complex people over time or accept financial risk tied to outcomes. “That’s going to be a combination of skilled care and unskilled care,” he said, referring to the mix of clinical services and support with non-clinical needs.
He pointed to Careforth’s caregiver-support approach as one example. The Boston-based company operates in nine states and provides payment, training, technology, clinical backup and other resources for home-based caregivers. Kusserow said it identifies family members or others in the home of a person receiving a Medicaid waiver, trains them, and pays them to provide care; he cited a payment of $50 a day for 24/7 care, alongside support and breaks. The source report does not specify that this arrangement applies to every Careforth client or state.
Kusserow also called for providers to develop services for higher-acuity needs and disease-specific care. He said information gathered across many patients could help teams identify risks and tailor support, using congestive heart failure as an example. Technology, he argued, can help caregivers maintain continuity and collect patient-specific information. “You can figure out when someone’s doing okay, when you need to be involved, when you don’t,” he said.
Why Home Health’s Model May Expand
The proposal matters because it reframes home health as long-term support at home, not only a series of skilled visits. If providers can combine clinical oversight with help from trained caregivers and community resources, they may be better positioned to support people whose needs extend beyond what a clinician can address during a visit. Kusserow said chronic illness requires care in the home and that repeated hospitalizations can become economically difficult for health plans and government payers.
That is Kusserow’s argument about the direction of the industry, not evidence that a particular care model has already reduced hospital use or costs. The financial and operational results would depend on implementation, the people served and how payers compensate providers and caregivers. His remarks nevertheless point to a policy and business question: whether home-based care can be funded to cover both clinical services and the daily support patients need to remain at home.
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Kusserow’s Home Care Roles
Kusserow has held leadership roles in home-based care and the wider health sector. He led Amedisys as CEO and chairman from 2014 to 2025; UnitedHealth acquired the company in a $3.3 billion deal that closed in August 2025. He became Careforth’s CEO in June 2026 and joined Elara Caring’s board in August. He is also executive chairman of Unified Women’s Healthcare and serves on the board of Matrix Medical Network.
Elara Caring, based in Dallas, provides skilled home health, hospice, behavioral health and personal care across 18 states. Careforth focuses on supporting home-based caregivers. The wider need for that support is reflected in AARP’s estimate that 59 million family caregivers helped an adult family member, neighbor or friend with daily activities in 2024. AARP valued that adult caregiving at $1.01 trillion for that year; the estimate describes unpaid caregiving’s economic value, not money paid to caregivers.
““That’s going to be a combination of skilled care and unskilled care.””
— Paul Kusserow, CEO and executive chairman of Careforth
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Funding and Results Remain Open
Kusserow’s remarks outline a proposed direction, but the report does not provide independent outcome data showing that the combined model improves health, reduces hospitalizations or lowers total costs. It also does not establish how many providers are adopting similar programs, what the full cost of caregiver training and support would be, or how consistently payers would reimburse those services.
The $50 daily payment he cited applies to the Careforth example he described; the report does not detail eligibility rules, local variations or whether the amount covers all forms of round-the-clock support. It is also not clear how providers would scale disease-specific care across different conditions, or what technology and data protections would be used to share patient information.
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Payer and Provider Decisions Ahead
The next step for the approach Kusserow described would be for providers and payers to determine how to fund and measure care that includes both clinical services and caregiver support. That would involve decisions about caregiver pay and training, clinical oversight, respite, technology, and which outcomes count in value-based arrangements. The source report does not identify a new Careforth rollout, payer agreement or policy change tied to the conference remarks.
Providers considering this model would also need to show whether it can support patients with higher-acuity and chronic conditions while keeping care coordinated over time. For now, Kusserow’s comments are an industry leader’s call for a broader home health model; its uptake, costs and measurable results remain to be established.
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Key Questions
What change is Paul Kusserow proposing for home health?
He says providers should supplement episodic clinician visits with skilled care, trained family or community caregivers, technology and support for daily needs.
What does Careforth do for family caregivers?
Careforth provides payment and support, including training, technology and clinical backup. Kusserow said the company pays some caregivers $50 a day for 24/7 care, but the report does not give full eligibility or program details.
How many family caregivers did AARP estimate were providing adult care?
AARP estimated that 59 million family caregivers helped an adult family member, neighbor or friend with daily activities in 2024. It estimated the economic value of that caregiving at $1.01 trillion for the year.
Has the proposed model been shown to reduce hospitalizations or costs?
The report provides no independent outcome data establishing that result. Kusserow argued that home-based care can help manage chronic conditions and avoid unnecessary institutional care, but measurable effects remain unclear.
Source: rss
