Category: Membership

2010 Membership eRenewals Available

It’s that time of year again!

For the second year in a row, agencies may renew their membership via our e-Renewal system.  If you are the CEO/President/Primary Contact of an agency member, just log-in to www.thinkhomecare.org, click to view your profile, access the company’s profile, complete the online form, and choose your payment option.

The process is easy, and generally takes less than 10 minutes.  I will email detailed instructions to CEOs/Presidents/Primary Contacts early next week.

Return to www.thinkhomecare.org.

HCA Welcomes New Member: Guardian Angel Senior Services, Inc.

The Alliance is pleased to welcome its newest member, Guardian Angel Senior Services, Inc., a private duty agency located in North Billerica, Massachusetts.

Search for a home care provider by town and/or service, visit our interactive Provider Search.

Return to www.thinkhomecare.org.

Follow the Alliance on Twitter and Save at Spring Conference

Spring Conference is just around the corner. If you`ve never attended, this is our biggest event of the year, and includes:

  • Workshops for your entire senior staff;
  • Can’t-miss keynote speakers like Secretary of Veterans Affairs Tom Kelley (a Congressional Medal of Honor recipient and the head of the Massachusetts VA system), and;
  • Exhibits from vendors offering the products and services you need.

In keeping with our technology-orientated Connect, Share, Innovate theme, we’re offering a special discount to our Twitter followers. Just sign in to Twitter, send us an @reply asking for the discount, and we`ll send you a coupon code good for $20 off each registration. It’s a simple and easy way to save on your registration fees and gives you a new way to follow the Alliance and its activities. Even if you’ve already registered for the conference, we`ll send you a refund for the difference.

Want to learn more about the Conference? Just visit its webpage and/or download a brochure. Don`t have a Twitter account or just new to it? It`s easy to use and free to set up. Just download the attached PDF and follow the instructions. Call me if you run into trouble.

How to Get the Discount:

  1. Sign-in to Twitter;
  2. If you’re not already following @thinkhomecare, do so;
  3. Send us an @reply requesting the discount such as “@thinkhomecare I`m attending the Spring Trade Show. Please send me the coupon code.”
  4. We’ll send you a direct message back with the coupon code.

Return to www.thinkhomecare.org.

Care Transitions And Home Care

For the many who have expressed interest, what follows is an update from the perspective of home care and the Home Care Alliance on Care Transitions – and the intersection with STARR efforts in this state.   A number of members are already involved in many of these efforts, but more input is welcome and needed.

The Alliance’s Care Transitions Task Force has met several times to continue work on a document we are calling our “Opt In” framework:   “Optimum Performance Standards for Transferring Patients To and From Home Health Care.” We have a good first draft and various pieces are being rewritten by Task Force members.     This will be a tool we provide to member agencies;  but it will also serve as a framework for partner providers to help them understand what they can expect when making a referral to home health.  This group will meet again in Brockton on April 27th at 11am.

Two additional efforts are underway in relation to the IHI STAAR project.  IHI is working with their project team on a Field Guide for Home Health – which will mirror those that have already been published for Physician offices and Skilled Nursing Facilities. These Guides – which I am happy to forward to anyone would like them – focus on encouraging use of evidence based best practices in the area of readmission reductions.   Some of these practices  – obviously  – have to do to with what happens during  “handovers.”  We have had a call with IHI on the outline for home health,  and several members have agreed to spend some time with IHI in Cambridge on either April 29 or 30 on actually beginning to draft the full document. Cheryl Pacella of Hebrew Senior Life HomeHealth Care is playing a lead role in facilitating this.

Additionally, the STARR project is looking at reducing readmissions through an ‘Enhanced Admission” tool. Given that our agency members on STARR teams – as well as those of us on the STAAR Steering Committee – have identified that hospitals may NOT be appropriately identifying who needs and could benefit from home health care, the team is looking at potentially modifying a QIO tool developed as part of HHQI to recommend be used as part of a process for screening all – or high risk patients – for home care.  We are needing to do a thorough industry review of this tool and make recommendations to IHI.  This will eventually be discussed on a STAAR home health call.  These calls are now open to any  interested agency (see previous post to this blog.)

Finally, one of the first action items from the state’s Care Transitions Plan will be to revise the three page discharge form to meet information needs of sending and receiving health care entities.   A Task Force with HCA representation will start meeting this month. As available, we will share for input with  this group.

These are all ambitious projects that can not be done without member input.  If you are not yet involved, it’s not too late to be so.  Just reply here or send me an email.     Thank you to all who have been supporting these efforts.

Pat Kelleher

Return to www.thinkhomecare.org.

Home Care, Palliative Care and Advanced Illness Management

The CHAMP program at the Center for Home Care Policy & Research of the Visiting Nurse Service of New York has developed a useful website that consolidates many evidence based tools and studies aimed at promoting high quality home based care.   In a new posting on their community blog, Dr Eric Widera of the Division of Geriatrics at UCSF discusses the power home care agencies have to provide innovative care that can integrate the palliation of symptoms, care coordination and advance care planning earlier in a patient’s disease trajectory. Included in his discussion of this timely issue – given the STAAR and End of Life Care Expert Panel projects in Massachusetts – is a link to CHAMP’s Evidence Brief on Advanced Illness Management.   Does this look like something your agency is already doing? Or could be? Comments welcome.

Second Edition of Private Care Guide Coming

Due to unprecedented demand, the Alliance has already distributed and/or received orders for nearly all 8,000 copies of its 2010 Guide to Private Services.  And it’s still 2009!

To ensure that the Guide is always available and up-to-date, we will be printing 2,000 copies of a 2nd Edition, set for release by the end of the year.  In the meantime, we are still taking orders for the Guide, which is also available for free download.

The 2010 Home Health Resource Directory should be available in January and will be shipped to every hospital, COA, and ASAP in the state, as well as every oncologist and geriatric specialist.

Return to www.thinkhomecare.org.

2010 PPS Rates Finalized: Alliance Calculates Local Rates

CMS posted the final rule on Medicare Home Health PPS rates for 2010 to the web on Friday, October 30, 2009.  Compared to the proposed rates released in July, the final rule lowers the market basket adjustment from 2.2% to 2.0%, which lowers the national standard episode rate to $2,312.94.  The final rule also makes small adjutments to the regional wage index to reflect updated hospital wage data.

The Alliance has prepared a spreadsheet of all HHRG rates for each geographic area in MA.

The final rule also delays for six months the requirement that agencies survey patients using the standard HHCAHPS satisfaction tool.

Return to www.thinkhomecare.org.

November is National Home Care Month: Help Us Raise Awareness

The Home Care Alliance is pleased to join the many agencies, organizations, and advocates across the state and country in celebrating National Home Care Month.

In working to raise awareness of the services provided to patients in their homes, the Alliance is also promoting the cost effectiveness of home health care, which helps people remain independent in their communities, and stepping up advocacy efforts.

You can help us raise awareness by using some of the materials provided below, including a press release and promotional posters provided by the National Association for Home Care & Hospice.

~SAMPLE PRESS RELEASE~

[Agency] Celebrating National Home Care Month
Month-Long Campaign in Motion Across the Country to Raise Awareness of Home Care

(Town), MA – [Agency] is joining home care and home health providers across the state and country this November to mark National Home Care Month and, with an intense focus on state and national health care reform, [Agency] is working to raising awareness of the services they provide as a cost effective solution to help improve care delivery.

“We are very proud of our work that enables patients to remain in the most comfortable and familiar setting: their own homes,” said [agency director]. “[Agency] is honored to help patients remain independent and close to their loved ones.”

Nationally, more than 11 million Americans receive home health care, according to the National Association for Home Care & Hospice. In Massachusetts, more than 150 member agencies of the Home Care Alliance provide over 5 million home care visits each year to approximately 175,000 elderly, mentally ill and otherwise infirm Massachusetts residents.

Through technological advances, home-delivered health care has grown far beyond basic professional nursing and home care aide services. Today’s modern home care agency offers a wealth of services from nursing, physical, occupational, respiratory and speech therapies to counseling, dietary, telehealth (remote patient monitoring) and personal care services.

“So many emerging health care reform efforts play to our member agency strengths,” said Home Care Alliance of Massachusetts Executive Director Patricia Kelleher. “Efforts at reducing readmission rates to hospitals and new state programs aimed at managing chronic illnesses can look to us for help and support.”

The cost efficiency of home care was recently proven in a study by the national research firm Avalere Health (May 11, 2009). Their research found that home health use saves Medicare dollars by reducing hospitalizations and nursing home stays. Based on their findings, an estimated $30 billion could be saved nationally over the next ten years by expanding access to home health for chronic disease patients.

To find out more about home care and National Home Care month, visit www.thinkhomecare.org.

Posters:

~In Memory of Sen. Kennedy

~Honoring the Caregiver

~Preserving Independence and Freedom

~No Place Like Home

~Compassionate Care Delivered to Your Doorstep

The National Association for Home Care & Hospice also lists other ideas on how to celebrate National Home Care Month here.

Return to www.thinkhomecare.org.

Home Health Agency is Finalist for BCBS of MA Quality Award

Visiting Nurse Association of Middlesex-East and Visiting Nurse Hospice was honored as a finalist  for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts’ Annual Health Care Excellence Award.  The VNA was recognized for reducing its re-hospitalization rate from 29% to 17% within two years – the lowest in the state – despite caring for an aging population that increasingly struggles with chronic conditions such as stroke, diabetes, emphysema, heart disease, and hypertension. This accomplishment has significantly reduced health care costs while improving the quality of life for their patients.

Also recognized as a finalist was EMC Corporation, an international leader in Information Infrastructure solutions.   EMC was recognized for its Partners in Health program, which successfully engaged its workforce and their families in learning how individual behaviors, choices and attitudes influence overall health and  health care expenditures, waste and outcomes.

This year’s award winner was Health & Education Services, Inc. (HES), a community-based behavioral health care network in northeastern Massachusetts. HEIS was selected for exceptional achievement in improving the safety and effectiveness of health care in Massachusetts through its Health Access and Integration Program (HAIP).

Return to www.thinkhomecare.org.

Professional Development for Healthcare Staff Opportunity

The course is free, but space is very limited for an all-day training session on professional development for health care staff, presented by PHI.

See this flyer to view details on the course, including information on how to register.

Professional Development for Health Care Staff: Teaching the Adult Learner.

When: Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Where: Milford Care & Rehab Center, 10 Veterans Memorial Drive, Milford, MA

Time: 8:00 am to 4:30 pm

Content: Tools and Techniques for Educators in a Health Care setting

Audience: Anyone with a staff training role

Credit: 5.5 contact hours from the American Nurses Credentialing Center (All participants must attend full day in order to earn CEU’s)

Cost: Free

Return to www.thinkhomecare.org.