Editor’s Picks: Slashing Hospital Readmissions, Honor in Walmart

This week, pre-claim stepped into the spotlight once again, with Illinois lawmakers asking for a delay. On the home care side of things, a popular story involved a startup’s presence in Walmart.

HHCN will be observing Columbus Day on Monday, October 10. We will return to our regular posting schedule on Tuesday, October 11.

We hope you enjoy your holiday weekend, but before you take off, here’s a recap of this week’s top stories on HHCN:

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Home Health Provider Helps Slash Hospital Readmissions by 60%— One home health provider is proving home health to be a successful option to reduce hospital readmission rates. The provider helped one hospital in Maryland reduce its readmissions of highly at-risk patients by 60% after establishing a partnership with them.

Top 10 Home Care Franchises—The Franchise Times’ Top 200+ list came out this week highlighting some of the best-performing franchises in the world. And 14 of those were home care franchises. Leading the health and medical category are Senior Care and Interim HealthCare.

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Lawmakers Urge CMS to Halt Pre-Claim in Illinois—Pre-claim has been underway since August in Illinois, but now lawmakers are asking for a delay. Rep. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Mark Kirk (R-IL) penned a letter to Andy Slavitt, acting administrator at the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).

Honor Sets Up Shop at Walmart in New Market—In-home care provider, Honor, has decided to try a new technique to reach its community. In the Dallas-Forth Worth market, Honor is opening storefronts in Walmart after recently securing a funding round of $42 million. There are currently two pilot stores open in the area where customers can learn about home care services and sign up for assessments.

Weekend Reads

What’s the Longest Humans Can Live? 115 Years, New Study Says— Despite a small group of people like Jeanne Calment, a french woman who lived to be 122 years old, a new study has found that the oldest a human can live is 115, according to The New York Times. An expert on aging at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Jan Vijg, explains that humans have reach our ceiling in terms of age expectancy. Breaking it down by geographical area, an American child born today can live, on average, to 79 but a Japanese child born today has a life expectancy of 83, The New York Times says.

The Invisible Revolution: How Aging Is Quietly Changing America— The aging population is not being taken into account as much as it should be in 2016 election, according to The Atlantic. In the 1950’s, less than 10% of the country was older than 65, but by 2050 that number is expected to double to 20%. “What if presidential candidates took a CEO approach to future-planning? Perhaps they’d spend less time talking about America’s old industries and more time talking about America’s old people,” The Atlantic says.

Lending a Helping Hand

After just one month of collecting food donations, a division of Kindred Healthcare Inc., Kindred at Home, and its home health, personal care and hospice affiliates collected more than 331,392 pounds of non-perishable food. The provider’s 12th annual food drive was held throughout August in over 600 locations across the country. The food will benefit food banks and other charitable organizations around the nation. The food drive began in 2005 and has collected more than 2.04 million pounds since.

Written by Alana Stramowski

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