Editor’s Picks: Palliative Care’s Value in New Payment Landscape

After seeing our March Madness college basketball brackets deploy before our eyes this week, we carried on to bring you the latest happenings in home health and home care. We let you in on Kindred Healthcare Inc.’s (NYSE: KND) plan to hold off on home health acquisitions and the latest from an ongoing lawsuit against Brookdale Senior Living (NYSE: BKD).

We also covered how palliative care is driving value with new payment systems from the AAHPM & HPNA Annual Assembly in Chicago, and our readers were still into Candy Chang’s ‘Before I Die’ art installations and the the conversations around palliative care.

Home Health Care News will be out of the office Friday, March 25. We will return to our normal posting schedule Monday, March 28.

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How ‘Before I Die’ Walls Boost Palliative Care—Palliative care appears to be near a tipping point, both due to increasing demand and the ways in which home health agencies and other health care providers are figuring out how to pay for it. New Orleans-based artist Candy Chang is the creator of the ‘Before I Die’ project, an interactive, public art installation that is a natural stepping stone to the growing importance and acceptance of palliative care.

Palliative Care Drives Value in New Payment Landscape—New payment models are upon us, and palliative care providers are jumping at the opportunities to expand their reach with other health care groups. With the fee-for-service era on its way out, alternative payment models for palliative care are growing.

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Brookdale Asks Court to Again Reject Charges in $35 Million Fraud Case—Brookdale Senior Living has asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Court to uphold a November 2015 decision rejecting a nurse’s False Claims Act lawsuit against the company for home health billing practices. The suit alleges the home health care giant engaged in fraudulent Medicare billing for home health services, originating from a backlog of 7,000 Medicare claims worth approximately $35 million.

Kindred Holds Off On Major Home Health Acquisitions—Home health deals dramatically dropped off in 2015, and now the nation’s largest home health provider intends to sit on the sidelines moving forward. After reporting significant consolidation and revenue growth at the end of 2015, Kindred executives indicated it won’t make any major home health purchases in the foreseeable future, CEO Benjamin Brier said at the Barclays Global Healthcare Conference in Miami.

Around the Web

I Needed to Find Care for my Elderly Aunt. What I Found Was an Eldercare Crisis—After helping her elderly aunt following another fall within the span of one year, journalist A.K. Whitney sought a more permanent living solution to keep her relative safer, but was confronted with a frustrating home care environment. After being referred to a home care company, Whitney realized a shortage of health care workers is looming despite a growing need for these in-home services.

Cutting-Edge Research Leads to More Targeted and Effective Home Health Care—With home health care playing an ever-larger role in medicine and wellness, there’s a growing need to ensure that home care services are being provided in a cost-effective fashion. New research being conducted by the Visiting Nurse Service of New York is looking at the impact of home health care on patients who are at a high risk of re-hospitalization, the Huffington Post reports.

Written by Amy Baxter

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