One of the most anxiously awaited aspects of the Patient-Driven Groupings Model (PDGM) is the elimination of therapy visit volume as a determining factor in calculating reimbursements. Despite reassurance from industry leaders that PDGM isn’t a ‘death knell’ for therapy services, therapy-heavy agencies will have to become more cost effective to ensure they don’t take […]
Category: Home Health Care
Although it’s often delivered in the private residences of older adults, home health care can also offer several benefits to assisted living providers, especially as their residents become older and more medically complex. In fact, by leveraging home health services, assisted living operators may be able to keep residents in their facilities longer. That’s according […]
Failure to adhere to a medication regimen is often cited as the No. 1 reason people — especially older adults with multiple chronic conditions — are sent back to the hospital following discharge. To change that, many home care providers have started to make in-home medication management a core component of their operations. That group […]
The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) is making good on its long-held promise to ramp up oversight of home- and community-based services, requesting an extra $10 million in its fiscal year 2020 budget to tackle fraud, waste and abuse in those areas. The extra funding — which would increase this portion of OIG’s budget […]
Home care providers have come out on top in a long legal battle to decide whether live-in home care aides in New York should be paid for 24 hours of work or for the 13 hours currently mandated. The New York Court of Appeal issued its decision in Andryeyeva V. New York Health Care Inc. […]
In addition to packages, the United Parcel Service (UPS) (NYSE: UPS) will soon deliver home-based health care. The world’s largest package delivery firm plans to test a dispatch service in which it will send home health nurses to provide in-home vaccines to U.S.-based adults, UPS representatives confirmed in an email to Home Health Care News. […]
Another large health system is breaking into home health care and hospice. Dallas, Texas-based Cornerstone Healthcare Group made its first dive into the spaces earlier this month with the acquisition of Phoenix, Arizona-based Southland Home Health. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. The acquisition is the first of many similar deals in the […]
Humana (NYSE: HUM) is leaning further into home health care as a key area of focus, going as far as to label it “the new frontier in value-based medicine” during an investor day presentation Tuesday. “Our journey into the home is in full gear,” William Fleming, segment president of health care services at Humana, told […]
Yet another study has found that home health care has the potential to drastically reduce health care spending and lower readmissions for patients following emergency room visits. Patients in the study who received home health care in-home immediately after going to the ER had a total 90-day cost of $13,012, compared to $20,325 for patients […]
A federal judge in Connecticut on Monday OK’d four classes as part of an ongoing suit against insurance giant Humana Inc. (NYSE: HUM) and two of its affiliates, brought on by home health workers who claim they were cheated out of pay and overtime wages. In addition to Louisville, Kentucky-based Humana, the legal battle specifically […]