Results from the 2021 Home Health and Home Care Staffing Survey

By:

The results of this survey from NAHC member Axxess and Home Health Care News show the views of 753 home-based care professionals polled about their thoughts on home health and home care staffing in 2021. The survey, conducted online between July 21 – August 6, 2021, asked about how companies are: Dealing with the impact […]

Read More

Improved Hospice Outreach to Minorities Could Save Medicare $270 Million

By:

Medicare spends 20 percent more, on average, on an African-American patient in the last year of his or her life than for white patients, but increased access to hospice services for minorities could save Medicare up to $270 million per year and lead to improved end-of-life care and experiences for elder minorities and their families. […]

Read More

National Institutes of Health Offers Funding Opportunities in Palliative Care

By:

The National Institute of Nursing Research at the National Institutes of Health has announced two funding opportunities, both called “Palliative Care in Home and Community Settings,” intended to stimulate research to determine needs and best practices for the integration of palliative care into home and community settings. For both opportunities, open dates for submission start […]

Read More

More Older Adults With Joint Replacements Recover At Home, Not Rehab

By:

Judith Graham KAISER HEALTH NETWORK Older adults and their families often wonder: Where’s the best place to recover after a hip or knee replacement — at home or in a rehabilitation facility? Increasingly, the answer appears to be home if the procedure is elective, friends and family are available to help and someone doesn’t have […]

Read More

Study Finds Home Health Physical Therapy Lowers Re-Hospitalization Substantially

By:

Home Health physical therapy visits can substantially lower the risk of re-hospitalization in older adults during a 60-day period, according to a new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Directors Association (JAMDA). Re-hospitalizations are estimated to cost more than $41 billion per year, with older patients disproportionately at risk to encounter serious […]

Read More

Home Health Saves Medicare Money Despite Slightly Higher Readmissions than SNFs

By:

The cost advantages of home health care make it less expensive than skilled nursing facilities (SNFs) despite a slightly higher hospital readmission rate, according to a new study by University of Pennsylvania researchers and published last week in JAMA Internal Medicine. The study found that Medicare patients discharged to home health had a 5.6 percent […]

Read More

Study: US Spends Far More on Health Care and Gets Less

By:

The United States spends far more on health care on a per capita basis than other wealthy countries, and the reason is higher prices, not greater utilization, according to a new study that appears in the January 2019 edition of Health Affairs. Researchers led by an expert from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public […]

Read More

Using Machines to Detect Medicare Fraud

By:

In a development that could have significant impact across the health care spectrum, researchers at Florida Atlantic University are using a form of advanced pattern matching to teach “machines” to detect Medicare fraud, according to a new study in Health Information Science and Systems. Currently, human beings investigate and audit Medicare claims to find certain […]

Read More

Study: Per Capita End of Life Care Spending is Falling Rapidly

By:

It has long been considered almost an article of faith that end-of-life spending is one of the major factors causing a rapid increase in overall health care spending in the United States. However, a new study challenges that belief, finding that per capita end-of-life care spending has been declining rapidly and that this decline has […]

Read More

Food as Home Health Care — California Funds Delivery of Healthy Food

By:

The state of California is funding a three-year, $6 million project to test whether home delivery of healthy food will impact hospital readmission and long-term care referrals, according to the New York Times. Researchers from Stanford University, the University of California, and San Francisco will study whether nutritious food deliveries to 1000 patients with Type-2 […]

Read More

Longer Home Health Visits Linked to Lower Readmission Rates

By:

Longer home health care visits may lead to lower hospital readmission rates, according to a new study from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). How much longer do those home health visits need to be to reduce readmission rates? As little as one minute. The NBER study of an anonymous multi-state, for-profit and private […]

Read More

Fewer Patients with Renal Disease Receiving Hospice

By:

Many Medicare patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) are not receiving hospice care, according to a new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association’s Internal Medicine. A study of over 770,000 Medicare beneficiaries, average age almost 75, over a 14-year time period, indicates only 20 percent of end-stage renal disease patients use […]

Read More