Comparing Oklahoma City Home Health Care to Tulsa Options

Comparing Oklahoma City Home Health Care to Tulsa Options

Medicare defines home health care as a broad range of health care services provided in a home setting following an injury or illness. According to Medicare’s website, home health care is usually less costly, more convenient, and often as effective as care one would receive in a hospital or skilled nursing facility.

Recent research from IBISWorld sees home health care as a $73 billion industry that employs over 1.3 million people in over 300,000 businesses. Given that those stats work out to just over four employees per business, it’s no surprise that no companies have dominant market share nationally.

But what about the Oklahoma City home health care market? And how does it compare to options an hour and a half away in Tulsa?

While there are a number ways to search for available options, for this article I focused on home health care services agencies that are listed in the Medicare.gov Home Health Compare directory.

Home Health Care in Oklahoma City

When searching for home health care agencies in Oklahoma City, 102 results came back.

The initial findings in the table are in alphabetical order and show whether each agency provides one or more of six core services:

  • Nursing care
  • Physical therapy
  • Occupational therapy
  • Speech therapy
  • Medical social services
  • Home health aide

To uncover the list of agencies that provide the broadest range of services, covering all six of these categories, applying the filter reduced the 102 results down to 87 results.

So the overwhelming majority of home health care agencies in Oklahoma City that are registered with Medicare, about 85%, cover all six categories of services. In other words, it’s difficult to compete without covering this broad range of home health care services.

When looking up NAICS Code 621610 (Home Health Care Services), there at least five large home health care agencies with locations in the greater Oklahoma City area:

Is Home Health Care in Tulsa Underserved?

Now running the same Home Health Compare search on the Medicare.gov for Tulsa, you’ll find 62 home health agencies registered with Medicare, as compared to 102 agencies in Oklahoma City.

The Oklahoma City metro area has a population of 1.2 million, as compared to a population of 900 thousand in the Tulsa metro area. (2010 Census).

So with about 25% fewer people, one would expect fewer Medicare-registered home health care agencies.

Now it’s not quite statistically perfect as we’re looking at 2010 Census data and 2015 Medicare directory data.

However, at least on a back-of-the-napkin calculation, there is one Medicare-registered agency in Oklahoma City for every roughly 12,000 people (1,252,987 divided by 102).

Moreover, in the Tulsa metro area, there is one Medicare-registered agency for approximately every 15,000 people (937,478 divided by 62).

So are there too few agencies in the Tulsa metro area? Alternatively, are there too many home health care agencies in the Oklahoma City metro area?

And again to get a feel for some for some of the key providers in the Tulsa home health care market, we ran a search on NAICS Code 621610 with locations in the greater Tulsa area and found:

Comparing the list of some of the larger providers in Oklahoma City to some of the larger providers in Tulsa, Carter Healthcare is the only home health care agency appearing in both searches.

 

What do you think are some of the big differences between how home health care is provided in Oklahoma City compared to Tulsa? Share your take in the Comments below.

 

And if you lead or manage home health care agency in Oklahoma City or Tulsa, and are looking to find new growth strategies, maintain HIPPA compliance, and better utilize technology, be sure to download your free copy of the IT Guide for Oklahoma City Home Health Care Organizations.