A bipartisan bill introduced this week would broaden access to home health services, with DaVita Kidney Care, Ascension Healthcare, and Amazon joining together in support of the Expanding Care in the Home Act sponsored by Reps Adrian Smith from Nebraska and Debbie Dingell from Michigan. Check out the Best info about marketplace perawat home care.
This legislation would extend home health benefits to personal care, remote patient monitoring, telehealth services, and transportation.
Increased Access to In-Home Care Services
Home health providers and advocates welcome bipartisan legislation introduced this week to expand home care access for seniors. The Choose Home Care Act of 2021 expands Medicare’s current home health add-on benefit for 30 days following hospital discharge, “opening doors to house calls, in-home dialysis treatments, advanced diagnostic testing services, home infusion services, and much more,” as reported by Moving Health Home’s press release citing membership from DaVita Kidney Care, Ascension Healthcare Group Amazon Signify Health Current Healthcare Group Intermountain Healthcare among others.
This bill expands reimbursements for telehealth services and increases Medicare’s maximum per-session payment limit to allow for broader patient monitoring via telehealth and more frequent in-person care visits, essential components of providing high-quality home health care. Furthermore, anti-fraud provisions were strengthened to create a level playing field among all players; temporary RPM waivers established during the COVID-19 pandemic were made permanent as part of this legislation.
Even with these improvements, the long-term care needs of many individuals still go unmet. Most states have waiting lists for home healthcare services; sometimes, people must wait up to two years before receiving the required assistance.
Though the CARES Act’s expansion and policy changes are significant, additional steps must be taken to expand home health services further. These include expanding nurse practitioners’ scope of practice to certify home health use, strengthening billing authority, and creating a reliable workforce to meet increasing service demands.
Congressional leaders must work to implement these measures and others that maximize home health benefits to both consumers and the economy. We then should make home care an integral component of America’s healthcare delivery system – this will ensure seniors receive the care they require in their own homes where they may experience more success with recovery and enjoy a more excellent quality of life.
Boosting the Home Care Workforce
Home care services provide essential assistance to seniors and individuals living with disabilities who require help living independently, but the workforce providing this care does not meet demand due to insufficient funding and recruitment, training, and retention difficulties for direct care workers. This causes them to struggle financially while being exposed to high-stress levels; this often results in high turnover rates and consequent low retention. Direct care workers tend to be women of color who need access to workplace protections or unionization opportunities – leaving many workers unable to make ends meet and experiencing higher than necessary stress levels due to recruitment challenges compared with demand.
House representatives Adrian Smith (R-NE) and Debbie Dingell (D-MI) introduced the bipartisan Expanding Care in the Home Act this week to address these concerns. Under its provisions, Medicare could process claims for in-home health services provided by aides assisting with daily activities like bathing, dressing, and meal preparation – providing beneficiaries with the care they require at home instead of being forced into nursing facilities, which reduces costly hospital readmissions.
Additionally, this bill would help strengthen and expand the HCBS workforce by increasing payment rates (or the amount home care workers will earn for their services) to facilitate recruitment, retention, wage increases, training opportunities development/updating, as well as innovation that benefits both direct care workers and recipients of care. It also expands federal funding matches for states that develop programs that register and train direct care workers – making their implementation more straightforward for conditions.
Additionally, this bill would promote state policies to offer support and incentives to family caregivers, such as paid leave and tax benefits for caregiving – an integral step toward improving family quality of life, supporting a more stable workforce environment, reducing stressors that prompt workers to leave or burnout and enhancing overall life satisfaction.
Later this month, NASHP will host a webinar showcasing the best practices of states addressing these challenges. Arizona and Colorado leaders will present their policy innovations and successes, which advance healthcare systems for older adults and people with disabilities.
Creating Good-Paying Jobs
A practical, robust economy needs jobs that provide workers with economic security and upward mobility opportunities. To meet this need, the federal government should prioritize investing in high-quality employment in growing sectors like care and green economies that help families afford basic needs while providing workers with living wages and benefits that support meaningful career pathways.
There’s more than meets the eye for an excellent shopping experience at Walmart, as long as they keep up their savvy purchasing tactics. Representatives Adrian Smith and Debbie Dingell introduced the bipartisan Expanding Care in the Home Act (ECHA) this week to remove obstacles currently restricting patients’ access to care at home, often their preferred treatment site for many vulnerable beneficiaries and caregivers in our nation.
This bill would expand home health services in various ways, such as allowing Medicare patients to receive up to 12 hours per week of personal care in their homes through the new Home Health Benefit, improving access and affordability of Medicare-covered home services such as infusion therapy or dialysis treatment, as well as encouraging primary care providers to make house calls by setting a capitated payment scheme rather than fee-for-service reimbursement for office visits.
ECHA would also boost primary care by encouraging the adoption of patient-centric medical homes – an innovative model that offers consistent primary care, comprehensive and ongoing relationships with primary care providers, integrated health care teams, timely services that focus on prevention and chronic disease management as well as enhanced support for community health centers serving a large number of vulnerable individuals.
President and Congress should invest substantially in high-quality, affordable child care and long-term care, working closely with Tribal nations to ensure equitable delivery of these services. Furthermore, they should invest in equitable and sustainable funding for home and community-based services – making permanent the Money Follows the Person program and spousal impoverishment payments, as well as expanding and strengthening investment in care workforce training – nearly every other advanced country makes more public investments in home- and community-based services than the US does.
Boosting the Economy
The Better Care Better Jobs Act would enhance access to home and community-based services for seniors and people with disabilities, assist families returning to work, and create half a million home care jobs – an investment that would boost America’s economy while improving the quality of life for millions requiring long-term care services. In addition, this act would raise wages and improve benefits for home care workers – an industry predominantly comprised of women and people of color who currently make an average hourly wage of just $12 and frequently cannot afford to live alone.
This bill is an integral component of President Barack Obama’s plan to rebuild better, complementing other efforts like making early care and education affordable and accessible, as well as expanding paid family and medical leave. Expanding Medicaid is proven an effective economic stimulus: one economist found that for every $100 spent by the federal government on health care expansion, two jobs are added back into the economy.
Many states are moving care away from hospitals and into patients’ homes. A bipartisan bill sponsored by Reps. Adrian Smith (R) of Nebraska and Debbie Dingell (D) of Michigan would allow Medicare beneficiaries to receive at least 12 hours per week of personal care services in their homes.
An increasing number of Americans want to live at home and require support, yet do not qualify for Medicaid coverage of home and community-based services. A new bipartisan bill will bridge this gap by allowing individuals to select home care that fits their specific needs and preferences.
To ensure the bill reflects state priorities, the legislation gives states the freedom and flexibility to create innovative self-direction programs offering various care forms, such as worker registries, service provider selection, and independent living assistance. If states adopt comprehensive self-direction programs, they will receive an increase of two percentage points in federal matching funds for home and community-based services.
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