Lack of Funding Causing Low In-Home Care Benefit Adoption Among Medicare Advantage Plans

Despite a rise in the number of Medicare Advantage (MA) enrollees over the past several years, the percentage of MA plans offering supplemental benefits, including home care services, is on its way down. That’s according to a recent study conducted by Duke University’s Margolis Center for Policy Health. Overall, there were 22 million Medicare beneficiaries […]

Why 2020 Will Launch the Medicare Advantage Boom in Home Care

The Medicare Advantage revolution continues to grow — and starting in 2020, home care providers will reap the rewards. Through a series of law changes over the past decade, including the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 and the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018, Medicare’s move away from fee-for-service models and toward value-based […]

Home Care Providers in These States May Be Best Positioned for Medicare Advantage

Medicare Advantage (MA) enrollment is expected to skyrocket in coming years, with more than one-third of Medicare beneficiaries currently signed up. But the pace of the great MA migration may be slower than originally anticipated — and vastly different across state lines. For home care providers, this means there could be fewer older adults with […]

Medicaid Home Care Demand Grows, States Grapple with Spending

More long-term care spending is going toward home- and community-based services (HCBS), according to a recent survey of all 50 states and the District of Columbia by Kaiser Family Foundation. Through the three main Medicaid HCBS programs in 2014—mandatory state plan home health services, personal care services, and Section 1915 (c) waivers—nearly 3.2 million people […]

Mapped: The Top 10 Best States for Aging

High-quality Medicare programs and a healthy senior population have made Colorado, Maine, and Hawaii the best states in the U.S. for growing old, according to new rankings from U.S. News & World Report. To come up with its rankings, U.S. News examined the 50 states across 12 metrics, including life expectancy, quality of Medicare programs, cost of care, […]

Average Home Health Medicaid Rate Increased in 2015

The average Medicaid reimbursement rates for home health and personal care providers ticked up slightly last year, newly released data show. Home health agencies received $93.93 per home health visit on average in 2015, up from $92.69 the year before, according to information compiled by the Kaiser Family Foundation. In states that paid registered nurses […]

Public Rallies Behind Medicare Payment for End-of-Life Talks

End-of-life care discussions between patients and doctors are getting major support from the public as the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) weighs its proposal to include these talks as part of practitioner billing, a new poll revealed. About eight out of 10 Americans support Medicare and private insurance coverage for advance care discussions, […]

Seniors’ Top Care Needs: Mobility, Self-Care Rank High

Over one-third of seniors living in the community report having self-care or mobility needs, according to an issue brief published by The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, a U.S.-based nonprofit organization headquartered in Menlo Park, California. Rachel Garfield of the Kaiser Family Foundation and her co-authors used the 2011 National Health and Aging Trends Study to analyze rates […]