I’d like to recreate for those NP entrepreneurs who didn’t make it to Blueprint for Success: Building and Growing Your Home-based Primary Care Practice the energy and synergy that fueled the content of this February 2020 debut conference collaboration between NNPEN and HCCI—and what it can mean for you and for continuity of service homebound patients. And as luck would have it, Joe Flores, NP and attorney, set the table for us on starting house call practices the month before at our January 21 Office Ours virtual meeting.  Bottom line, you need to do some self-scrutiny before jumping in with both feet; the home-based care setting presents challenges. Joe was enthused about house call and HBPC opportunities within reach of the NP entrepreneur because they are low cost start up options that create a win/win for the NP practice owner and for the vastly underserved home-bound population.  Here’s a link to Attorney Flores’ January 2020 Office Ours recorded session. https://nnpen.org/Office-Ours.

NNPEN is a for-profit LLC, co-founded in 2017 by four determined nursing leaders who share the belief that America’s 250,000 nurse practitioners (NPs) are the key to primary care access in this country, and it is not immoral or even unbecoming for NPs to profit from solving access challenges.

We believe this is possible if we can incubate an ecosystem that connects aspiring NP entrepreneurs with each other and with sustaining start-up resources.

But our vision depends on three things:

1. Full practice authority
2. Value-based payment (VBP) contracts with payers that reward the quality and cost savings that reliably flow from the patient-centered nursing process and
3. Providers who, with support, learn how to lean into VBP as an informed risk-taking alternative to predictable --but not practice-sustaining --fee-for-service (FFS) payments.

We are constantly looking for partners on this journey who see this linkage of full practice authority, VBP and informed risk-taking as the win-win that it is.  HCCI approached NNPEN last year and they had us cold when they shared with us this powerful graph—that tells us that delivering primary care in the home setting is a path forward being considered primarily by NPs, and these NPs need support with clinical, practice management and ownership issues.

Through this lens (above) we undertook joint sponsorship of the February 2020 HBPC conference to cross-fertilize not-for-profit Home-Centered Care Institute’s (HCCI) professional development mission with NNPEN’s entrepreneurship agenda to produce  i) a well-defined HBPC practice ownership blueprint ii) to make start-up and sustainability iii) easier for you as a practice owner and iv) primary care access feasible for the 85% eligible but unserved home-bound population in this country—whether through a cash business, referrals from hospital discharge planners, or marketing to your local Medicare Advantage plans, this might be your market!

So what are some of the takeaways that will excite you?  Let me share, with HCCI’s permission, a few slides that highlight issues HBPC owners will inevitably face:

Michael Helle @Blueprint 0220

Hands-On @Blueprint0220

Laura Snider @Blueprint0220

Laura Snider @Blueprint0220

Payments Panel @Blueprint0220

BPlecner/LRapsilber @Blueprint0220

Cyber Security @Blueprint0220

A final takeaway: Home-based Primary Care can be an ownership opportunity with the Nurse Practitioner’s name written all over it.  HCCI is the very best at delivering your HBPC professional development training; find them at  www.hccinstitute.org.  NNPEN www.nnpen.org will support your ownership agenda. Check out both our websites.

So, drivers: start your engines…Entrepreneurship is simply Prochaska change management in an MBA outfit: You Got This!

SB

Sandy Berkowitz
Co-founder and CEO NNPEN