Home Health & Hospice Week

Growth is concentrated in Florida, Texas. Here are the stats the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission is using when making its influential recommendations to Congress about your Medicare payments: There were 11,300 Medicare-certified home health agencies in 2010, which is up 50 percent since 2002 and exceeds highs set in the 1990s. More than 1,000 new agencies opened in 2009. Growth is concentrated in a few areas, such as Florida and Texas. The number of home health users has grown 3.9 percent since 2002, to 3.3 million in 2009. The number of home health episodes has grown 6.9 percent from 2002 to 2009, to 6.5 million. The number of episodes per user has grown from 1.6 to 2.0 from 2002 to 2009. In 2001, episodes were split about evenly between admissions from the community versus the hospital. In 2008, 64 percent of admissions came from the community. In 2009, freestanding HHAs [...]