There’s a reason so many patients ask to be treated at home rather than in a hospital room. Think about how you’d want to be cared for. Home offers something a facility can’t: the comfort of familiar surroundings, paired with the reassurance of skilled care close by. That pull toward home-based treatment is reshaping healthcare, and it’s one of the forces behind the growth in home health and hospice.
Home-based care continues to expand as an aging population, evolving care models, and advances in technology allow more patients—including higher-acuity patients—to receive care outside traditional facilities. But growth in home health and hospice has also brought reimbursement pressure, staffing shortages, and shifting regulatory requirements behind home health agencies, hospice providers, and the senior care organizations that surround them. For agents placing these risk types, that means the accounts on your desk are getting more complicated, even when the submission itself looks routine.
It’s easy to lead with the numbers that underwriters typically ask for first, like revenue, payroll, and headcount. Those figures are important, but they describe an operation’s size, not its exposure.
As Lee Woodruff, Vice President at Jencap put it, “Two accounts with similar revenue can look completely different once you understand what is happening operationally.” Underwriters try to get that operational picture from the first submission onward, and accounts that spell it out clearly tend to move faster than those that leave carriers with unanswered questions.
Because a handful of operational details tend to separate a straightforward placement from a difficult one, think about these questions when you’re prepping one of your healthcare clients:
Unfortunately, none of these variables just “show up” on a declarations page. That would be far too easy. Instead, you’ve got to do a little legwork up front to strengthen your submission by front-loading what you know underwriters will eventually ask for anyway. Answer the questions above, and you’ll be more likely to move swiftly and land with markets that are a genuine fit.
Underwriters generally want detail on patient acuity, the specific services provided, the staffing model (including contract labor use), the states and settings where care is delivered, and a loss run with context behind the claims.
Higher acuity patients, such as those receiving IV therapy or complex wound care at home, typically carry more clinical risk than patients receiving companion or custodial care, even when the agencies serving them report similar revenue.
Underwriters may consider contract labor use, turnover, staff qualifications, training, and supervision because these factors can affect how services are delivered and managed.
Accounts become difficult to place when reimbursement pressure, complex service lines, or a thin loss history narrative leave underwriters without enough operational context to price the risk confidently.
A strong submission includes patient population and acuity details, a breakdown of the staffing model, the jurisdictions and settings where services are provided, and current loss runs, along with context around material claims.
Jencap's specialty reach already covers the healthcare landscape end to end, from property and casualty to workers' compensation and professional lines, and everything in between. If you have a home health, hospice, assisted living, or other healthcare account that has been sitting on your desk because the fit isn't obvious, that is exactly the kind of submission our healthcare team works on. Get a quote or find the broker in your region to start the conversation before the account gets harder to place, not after.