The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation recently awarded a prestigious $625,000 grant to a home care advocate who has championed the rights of domestic workers, including home health aides, a New York Times article reports. Ai-jen Poo, the director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, won the 2014 MacArthur “genius” grant last week […]
Category: Home Health Care
In a recent California case, a court ruled that home health workers hired to care for Alzheimer’s patients may not sue them or their families for injuries caused by those patients. But the ruling also raises new questions about where liability lies for in-home caregivers. The following guest column for Home Health Care news is […]
Nearly half of family caregivers spend more than $5,000 per year on caregiving, impacting their finances as well as current employment and future retirement plans, a new study shows. Of the 46% of family caregivers that spend more than $5,000 annually, 30% spend more than $10,000 each year, according to Caring.com’s latest “Usage and Attitudes” […]
Nearly one-half of older Americans, or 18 million people, had difficulty or received help in the last month with daily activities, according to a recent study published in The Milbank Quarterly. “The older population—especially those with few economic resources—has substantial late-life care needs,” the study says. “Policies to improve long-term services and supports and reduce unmet need […]
Transitional care interventions, which aim to improve care transitions from hospital to home, help reduce hospital readmissions 31 to 365 days after discharge, a study in Health Affairs’ latest issue shows. But the study’s authors found that only high-intensity interventions — including the need for home care visits — seemed to be effective in reducing […]
Unclear filing guidelines for Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) documents are costing home health care providers billions of dollars a year, a recent report shows. Thirty-two percent of home health claims did not have the requisite or complete face-to-face encounter documentation, which resulted in $2 billion in payments that should not have been made […]
The owner and operator of a Miami, Fla., home health care company was sentenced to more than six years in prison Monday for her alleged participation in a $6.5 million Medicare fraud scheme, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced. Cruz Sonia Collado, 64, was an owner and operator of the now-defunct home health care […]
In the health care industry’s quest to lower avoidable hospital readmission rates, recent findings by state Medicaid Medical Directors (MMD) now highlight the high costs — and prevalence — of Medicaid readmissions. The 30-day Medicaid readmissions rates for 19 participating states varied, but accounted for an average of 9.4% of all admissions, according to MMD […]
Several home care fraud developments in New York, Rhode Island and Louisiana have led the National Assoication for Home Care and Hospice to recommend that providers “re-double” their internal efforts against fraud. The association points to findings from the National Council on Medicare Home Care, a NAHC affiliate, that show Medicare fraud activity in areas […]
Since Ohio’s new managed care plan for dual eligibles rolled out locally in July, home health workers — and their agencies — have been struggling to adjust to payment processing changes, The Columbus Dispatch reports. Before the plan, called “MyCare Ohio,” the government would process claims submitted by independent workers and home health agencies in […]