— National private duty franchise corporation “Seniors Helping Seniors” has selected ClearCare Online as its EMR, scheduling, and billing application.
— Care at Hand introduces new Chief Nursing and Quality Officer (more…)
by Tim Rowan
In the past year, Great Lakes Caring, the largest healthcare at home and hospice provider in the state of Michigan, has significantly reduced its number of 7-day hospice stays while increasing its number of stays lasting 14 days or more. CEO William Deary attributes this change to a new software tool implemented in mid-2014. The agency’s corresponding uptick in revenue and cash flow has more than paid for the cost of the new system. (more…)
by Tim Rowan
Last month, researchers from Harvard Medical School’s Department of Health Care Policy announced that they have launched a joint partnership with ClearCare, a company that provides a software platform for non-medical home care agencies, and Right at Home, the senior home care franchise corporation. The program, titled “The Intervention in-Home Care to Improve Outcomes,” or simply “In-Home,” will test a large scale randomized intervention aimed at preventing hospitalizations, improving health outcomes, and lowering Medicare spending among private-pay home care recipients. (more…)
Speculation has run wild for two years about how CMS might change the home care payment system this time. Talk of payment bundling, where hospitals get all the money and dole it out as they see fit, is already appearing as a workshop topic. Rumors about payments going directly to patients have come and gone. All of this precedes any type of formal statement by CMS, MedPAC or Congress.
To help cut through rumors and exaggerations, HCTR is going to take on a study of the Accountable Care Organization (ACO) concept that appeared in outline form in last year’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA). Where facts are available, we will pass them along. Where experts have paved the way before us, we will quote them, interview them, or let them write articles of their own.
This week, we begin with an analysis by longtime student of the way elected and unelected federal employees think, Jeff Lewis. We caught up with the founder and former owner of Lewis, Inc., a Baton Rouge-based home health care software company now a part of HealthCarefirst, to ask whether he is experiencing any degree of withdrawal eight months after leaving the industry that had been his life for over 25 years.
He says he has not returned to health care in any official manner, though he has had a few meetings with providers interested in bringing him on to help shape their future plans. But has not found the right role yet, which he says is no surprise because he sees the approach of a healthcare system that is very different from what we have today. If this paper is any indication then we have to agree.
Never one to mince words, Lewis told us when he offered to write the following article, “In the eight months since I left home care, I can’t say I have looked anyone in the eye who is going to be a part of the future of home care, based on what they tell me they are planning.”
A constant researcher, Lewis’ understanding of what has been presented so far from government and media sources seems to exceed that of many with whom we have spoken or whom we have listened to at conferences. Where specifics are still unknown, he clearly says so. Where well-established patterns from the past are likely to be repeated, he draws some conclusions as to how they will apply to this decade’s developments.
With this article as a starting point, we will hear from other experts in future issues and report on rules as CMS releases them. Your reactions to Lewis’ analysis of the new world of ACOs, and the things home care and hospice providers and their technology vendors can be doing now to prepare, are welcome. (more…)
Hospitals are desperate for your help. Next October, Medicare will begin to penalize hospitals that do not bring their patient readmission rates under control. Fines will start at 1% of a hospital’s annual Medicare payments and rise every year until readmissions decline. Hence, hospital administrators will be open to any and all suggestions. Home health care providers are in a key position to help.
This was the message delivered to a standing-room-only audience during the annual Southwest Regional home health care conference, “Catching the Dream of Home Care,” held last week in Albuquerque. The presenter, Scott Flowers, is a project director for EQ Health Solutions, the Medicare QIO for Louisiana. (more…)
The research is nearly 10 years old but still valid. Shaving a day or two off the end of a hospital stay saves only about 5% of the cost of admission. This is because most of the costs are incurred at the beginning of an admission. Whether hospitalization occurs due to scheduled or emergency surgery, via the emergency department or for non-emergency, non-surgical reasons, most of the expense accrues during the first days. (more…)
A comprehensive new report provides nine hospital recidivism success stories about inter-agency collaboration projects in nine different regions. We found two that include home health care agencies using advanced technology as their projects’ center pins. This week, a home care agency, hospital and senior clinic in Denver worked together to reduce 30-day readmissions from 20% to 13% and 60-day readmissions by 50% compared to uncoached patients. Here is how they did it. (more…)
We confront home care and hospice’s toughest problems through five topical newsletters.
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Do you have a program that is helping to limit re-hospitalizations? We want to hear from you.
We would like to hear about it. This is the place to tell your stories about a home care patient’s return to the hospital, especially one that you were powerless to prevent.
I have heard stories about patients being hospitalized for reasons that were completely beyond the control of their home care provider, sometimes completely unnecessary. But the provider is dinged for it anyway.
I want to hear these stories, publish them, use them to increase the industry’s insight and awareness and help everyone out. Naturally, we need you to leave out your name and everything that might identify your patient. Address your story to tim@homecareful.com.
In coming issues, we will expand on this service to include other stories. The more the experience shocked you, the more helpful it will be to tell it to the entire industry.
- Have you had medications stolen from your patients?
- Have you had patients neglected?
- Have you had family members do insane things?
- Have you had physicians who wanted to increase hospital census?
- Have you had physicians ignore your warnings?
- Have you had hospitals discharge inappropriate patients?
All of these things, and worse, are happening to patients every day. We need your help to compile a list of the ways in which others make it difficult for you to do what you do best, care for patients.
CMS and government planners might not get around to your neck of the woods very often. Sometimes it seems as though the only way they know what you do is through cold, raw numbers. By cataloging the hospitalization reasons you experience every day, perhaps someone in Washington or Baltimore will understand your world better as they calculate your outcomes.
The door to the Homecareful website is open. Use it! Tell Tim about a few of your hospitalizations that were going to happen no matter what you did. We are all in this together.
