Home Health Care in the Future
Home health care is a practice growing in popularity, thanks to fast advances in technology and changes in the delivery of health care. Having medical services delivered in the patient’s home increases patient comfort and helps ease the strain on a medical office. These changes are happening at just the right time, as our baby boomers age and need increasing health care assistance. Home care has been one of health care’s “best kept secrets”, due to an unfortunate oversight by the community as a whole. Traditionally, society sees health care in a white sterile room. The future views health care in the home, where patients are comfortable and heal faster from a variety of conditions, and where health care costs are reduced overall.
The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Readmission Reduction Program, implemented financial penalties to any hospital with high readmission rates, through the ACA in 2012. This is due to the fact that the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission reported to Congress in 2007 that 17.6 percent of all hospitalizations were the result of avoidable re-admissions in the initial 30 days of release. This cost taxpayers $12 billion in that year. Among the reasons for re-admission were:
- Confusion over medications
- Patients do not understand what is wrong
- Follow-up appointments not scheduled
- Family members not understanding patient care
It’s obvious that home health care can eradicate all of these issues. Studies conducted by the Alliance for Home Health Quality and Innovation found the potential savings to taxpayers to be $10.3 billion over a ten year span if more people begin using home health care for post-acute episodes instead of requesting re-admission to a hospital.
The future of home health care is also built around technology. Thanks to advances in technology, medical professionals can communicate with each other in real time, coordinate on a team faster, have improved communication with the patient, and implement better billing models. Additionally, smaller home health care agencies are able to provide better services, helping keep the basic capitalist economic model in place. Bringing competition to the marketplace will help keep costs of services at a reasonable level.
If you’d like to talk more about how you can save money by using the future of home health care, contact Vancouver Home Health Care Agency today.
At Vancouver Home Health Care Agency, Caring and Compassion is our business.