Robust Medicare reimbursements for house calls and nonmedical services, and the need for hospital beds due to COVID-19 are driving increases in Medicare Hospital at Home programs nationwide. Given the expansion of such programs, home caregivers need to recognize and promote the importance of their roles.
This was the message that Sheila Davis, executive senior vice president of Area Operations, Always Best Care Senior Services, and Summer Napier, CEO and owner, Healing Hands Healthcare LLC, delivered during a session of the National Association for Home Care & Hospice’s Private Duty Home Care Winter Leadership Summit on Tuesday. The title of the session was “Bringing the Hospital Home with Private Duty Care.”
About 30% of older patients with conditions such as congestive heart failure (CHF), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and pneumonia are candidates for at-home hospital level care if they’re “at a low risk of clinical deterioration with proper care and are less likely to require highly technical hospital-based procedures,” Davis said.
Moreover, said Napier, Hospital at Home patients experience lower rates of mortality, better functional outcomes and “cost savings of 19% top 30% compared to traditional inpatient care.”
The speakers urged home care agencies to do all they can to become effective parts of Hospital at Home programs. That begins for some, with a mindset change.
“Stop using words like housekeeping,” Napier said. “You are overall caregivers and you’re just as important as the nurse and doctors coming into the homes because you’re their boots on the ground and their eyes in the home when it comes to knowing the patients.”
The speakers also stressed the importance of training opportunities for home care aides interested in gaining professional certifications in dementia care, CHF, COPD, chronic pain, wound care and other specialties. The ultimate goal is to become effective, interdisciplinary partners to help eliminate emergency room visits and hospital readmissions.
