Home health care: Blessing or curse?
"May you live in interesting times," goes the Chinese saying. Although at first glance the words seem innocuous enough, the saying is actually a curse. To the Chinese, it is tantamount to wishing that someone live in turbulent, troublesome days overshadowed by change, shock, and looming disasters.
And this is not at all unlike the current state of the home health care industry, according to attendees at the National Association for Home Care’s 16th annual meeting, held Oct. 17-22 in Boston. The saying was quoted by William Simione Jr., CPA, a home care consultant from Hamden, CT, during his address to a session for hospital executives. It is easy to see why.
Reviewing the events of 1997 the Balanced Budget Act, Operation Restore Trust, and the president’s moratorium on home health agencies, to name but a few many home care professionals were left wondering just how long providers could stand such interesting times.
Perhaps the collective conference feeling was best expressed by Susan Schulmerich, RN, BS, MBA, executive director of Montefiore Home Health Agency in Bronx, NY. "The conference had almost a schizoid personality," she observed. "Or manic-depressive. We talked about all the great things we do and the positive impact we make on people’s lives that was the happy, manic side. Then the depressive side was, Look at what HCFA’s trying to do to us.’"
Lecture rooms at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston were filled with audiences eager to learn how to adapt to the changes wrought by politics and economics. Many conference attendees who spoke with Hospital Home Health were ready to move on, despite a fear of change. After all, the Balanced Budget Act is history and patients still have to be cared for. Now, where do we go from here?
HHH will try to help readers find their way. Starting in January and continuing throughout the year, we will discuss some of the major topics emerging from the NAHC conference, including reduced Medicare reimbursement rates, the future of hospital-based agencies under Medicare’s prospective payment system, managed care, freedom of choice regulations and related antitrust issues, and provider-sponsored organizations.
It was an interesting conference. These are interesting times.
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