The following are the remarks of Home Care Alliance President Beverly Pavasaris to the members at the 2013 Annual Meeting.
Welcome to the 2012/13 Annual Meeting. It’s both a pleasure and an honor to be serving in a second year as Alliance President . This year I am pleased to say we had tremendous interest from the membership in serving on the Board. I am delighted to welcome our new Board members, all of whom are already leaders in their own organizations and anyone of whom could be prepared to take the helm of the Alliance if asked. I also extend my thanks to those Board members who will be continuing on for another year, your advice and counsel have been welcome. And, I would like to recognize Joanne Kramer, VNA Care Network; Kathleen McDonough, Community Health Network and Bob Tonti, VNS of Marthas Vineyard, who are leaving the Board. Thank you for your service.
As we end one Alliance fiscal year and embark on another, let me just give you a few facts and figures on home care today in Mass. Firs, on the Home Care Alliance:
We have 208 Agency, 54 Allied and 12 individual members
The average size of non-certified member agency: $1.4m
The average size of certified member agency: $8.8m
The increase in Alliance total dues , FY09 – FY12: 25%
Total revenue of members: Has now passed one billion dollars!
* $895million (certified)
* $155 million (non certified)
Just a few facts on the non-certified home care business. These come from a survey that we co-marketed with the Home Care Association of America. The first slide shows our state’s average per hourly billing rates compared to national northeast and industry leaders. No surprise we are slightly higher .
The next shows our turnover rates, which to our credit are remarkably lower. I am not sure if these two are linked but certainly the fact that turnover rates that are almost 20% lower than the national are a credit to us as employers and a benefit to our patients.
Just a few facts on the Medicare certified business. This chart, which is Medicare data based, shows that almost 25% of Medicare beneficiaries leaving hospital are referred for home health services. This number, to our credit , is almost 8% higher than the national average of just under 17%. By the way, this also means in our state that we have far fewer people who are reported going home with no services. The national number according to Masspro Medicare data is 51%
This second to last slide just gives you a different look at some similar data that show that per capita use of home health in Mass is higher than the national average – and the highest by the way, in New England .. The closest to us is Connecticut where the use per 1000 beneficiaries is 109. The highest per capita usage –is 144, which no surprise is the number for Florida, TX and LA.
My final slide comes from a home care chart book that a subcommittee of our Board has been working on with some facts and examples about how home health delivers value in health care today. This slide set will soon be posted to our website for all members to download and adapt as they would like. I hope that you will find it useful.
Again thank you all for joining us here today and for standing up for home care by being active members in the Home Care Alliance. As always, I and the other Board members welcome your feedback.
Think Home Care Blog 
Bev
You are always so articulate about the challenges we face as an industry. I’m so glad you are representing all of us again this year.