If a senior or homebound patient is eligible for home health care, there are a number of caregiving professionals who can open a case and begin an assessment. Those include nurses, physical therapists and others. One profession that is not on that list is an occupational therapist. However, a new proposed bill could change that. […]
American Occupational Therapy Association
Heading into 2020 — the first year of the Patient-Driven Groupings Model (PDGM) — many believed there would be an inevitable disruption to home health therapy utilization. More than three years later, it’s still unclear exactly how PDGM has impacted therapy, and how the industry can differentiate PDGM’s impact versus the pandemic’s. More clarity should […]
As different health care stakeholders combed through the new $1.4 trillion spending package approved by Congress on Monday, many likely felt a mix of excitement and disappointment. Included in the nearly 6,000-page spending package was a $900 billion COVID-19 relief bill, changes to home health therapy rules, certain hospice provisions and more. That’s really just […]
The Patient-Driven Groupings Model (PDGM) was supposed to define home health care in 2020. Instead, this year was almost entirely shaped by COVID-19, a point that’s reinforced by the most widely read stories on Home Health Care News. Of the top-10 stories on HHCN in 2020, eight were related to coronavirus coverage. From the first […]
More than six months have passed since the Patient-Driven Groupings Model (PDGM) took effect. Despite the ample runway, many home health providers are seemingly still adjusting their therapy strategies, prolonging the initial layoffs, pay cuts and furloughs that took place at the beginning of the year. The coronavirus is largely to blame for the continued […]
Last week, Home Health Care News highlighted widespread reports of home health therapy layoffs and visit reductions following the implementation of the Patient-Driven Groupings Model (PDGM). While therapy-visit reductions are tied to a number of factors, some stakeholders have specifically called attention to what they see as an over-reliance on predictive analytics tools and an […]
Therapy layoffs, conversions to part-time status and general service reductions are beginning to ramp up in the home health space, multiple professional association groups told Home Health Care News. So much so, in fact, the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) may be preparing to speak up. The current shift in how and […]
A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers is trying to make the delivery of home health therapy services more flexible by broadening Medicare rules on who can open cases. Specifically, two identical bills that would allow occupational therapists to open home health therapy cases were introduced in both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives earlier […]