Will your state fund more home care?
At the same time federal lawmakers are considering slashing home care's Medicare budget, state lawmakers are giving home care providers a boost.
In New York, Gov. Eliot Spitzer (D) proposed a freeze to hospital and nursing home reimbursement rates under Medicaid in 2008, but left home health agency payment rates intact, according to press reports.
"We will no longer subsidize empty hospital and nursing home beds," says Spitzer, who favors closing and consolidating such facilities. "It's a waste of money."
Legislation: In Wyoming, the state senate passed a bill that aims to help seniors stay in their homes rather than go to nursing homes and other institutions. The bill proposes increasing funding for home care and increasing pay rates for home care workers, reports the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle.
Recommendation: In Pennsylvania, a panel appointed by Gov. Ed Rendell (D) says that state's residents need greater access to palliative care and hospice. The report recommends providing patients greater access to home care for terminal patients, according to the Associated Press.
Although nine out of 10 Pennsylvanians say they would prefer to die at home, nearly half of all deaths in the state occur in hospitals, noted state Secretary of Aging Nora Dowd Eisenhower, who led the task force.
Rendell included end-of-life care provisions in a health care reform proposal he announced last month, AP says. His plan calls for expanding hospice services for the dying.
Study: Meanwhile, Ohio needs to invest more in home care if it hopes to contain its Medicaid budget, a new study says. The state ranks 49th out of 50 states serving Medicaid long-term care clients in home and community-based settings, found the study conducted by Levin, Driscoll and Fleeter and commissioned by the Ohio Council for Home Care.
In 2003, Ohio's annual nursing home Medicaid spending per patient was about $56,000, while Medicaid spending on home care per patient was less than $12,000 annually, the trade group says in a release.
If Medicaid patients in Ohio selected home care over nursing home care, Ohio would have annual savings of $28,000 per long-term care patient--an annual Medicaid savings of almost $900 million, the study estimates.
• Get ready to defend your contusion diagnosis code claims. Regional home health intermediary Cahaba GBA is launching widespread review of home health claims with a primary diagnosis of 920.xx-924.xx (Contusion with intact skin surface).
Cahaba is throwing open the scrutiny after an earlier probe of 84 providers' claims found an error rate of 43 percent, the intermediary explains on its Web site. More information is at
www.cahabagba.com/part_a/whats_new/20070131_skin_surface.htm. • Home care providers served by new regional home health intermediary National Government Services, which replaced Associated Hospital Service and United Government Services Jan. 1, are seeing more [...]
