The Texas Association for Home Care board of directors has adopted a Health Care Reform position statement in support of home health, hospice, and personal assistance services, and in opposition to cuts included in HR 3200, the House version of the health care reform bill.
The position statement describes specific recommendations for making home care the cost effective solutions to health care reform, as well as advocating for payment equity, cost containment, ethics and accountability.
The Texas Association for Home Care Inc. strongly urges Congress and President Obama to expand home health, hospice, and personal assistance services to people of all ages and applicable health conditions as the leading means to cost effectively benefit the full continuum of America’s health care system.
Home health care is the provision of in-home nursing, including intensive services such as intravenous therapy and ventilator care, therapies (physical, occupational, and speech), medical social services and personal care (home health aide). Home health is a viable, high quality and desired long-term cost containment solution to health care reform.
In Medicare alone, enhancing options for delivering in-home nursing, therapies and personal care services will extend the quality of life for millions of Americans while saving Medicare billions of dollars. For example:
- A 2009 study conducted for the Alliance for Home Health Quality and Innovation found that allowing all Medicare beneficiaries with chronic diseases regardless of home bound status to access home health care after a hospital stay would save the Medicare system $31.1 billion in re-hospitalizations over 10 years.
- Currently, only 8.9 percent of Medicare beneficiaries use home health services due in large part to the program’s outdated and costly requirement that an individual be “homebound” and unable to leave his or her home without significant assistance in order to receive the benefit.
- Medicare rules have been in effect since 1965 and must be reformed to align with the cost efficiencies afforded by a modern technology-based health care system. These rules should include home health care in the use of electronic health records as part of the current initiatives spearheaded by Dr. David Blumenthal, national coordinator for Health Information Technology.
- Savings to Medicare must be achieved with reform that preserves high quality health care. Delivering a broader spectrum of health care services to Medicare beneficiaries in their home settings preserves quality while offsetting the current high-cost and life debilitating practice of assigning access to medical services only through institutional settings.
In stark contrast, HR 3200 the health care reform bill, would lower the quality of health care delivered to current Medicare beneficiaries in order to offset the cost to expand health care coverage to 97 percent of the country’s population.
- HR 3200 would cut $56.8 billion from the Medicare home health benefit and $500 billion to all Medicare programs over 10 years.
- Although home health care amounts to only 4.5 percent of all Medicare spending, under HR 3200 these highly desired cost-effective methods for delivering care would undergo 11.4 percent of the total cuts to the Medicare budget outlined in the bill.
Congress and the president should reject the notion that disproportionate cuts to Medicare home health equates to health care reform. In fact, it is the opposite. Long-term cost containment that preserves quality will only be achieved by eliminating regulations that prohibit Americans’ access to the most cost effective methods for delivering services.
