Home Health & Hospice Week

Home health, private duty, and hospice agencies’ worries about securing PPE for their workers is getting wider attention than usual for the industries.

Mainstream press outlets from coast to coast are profiling workers who go into patients’ homes to serve their medical and personal needs — and one of their top concerns, difficulty accessing personal protective equipment such as masks, gowns, and gloves, as well as N95 masks for patients who have tested positive for COVID-19.

“Home Health Aides Are Desperate For PPE,” one Fox News headline says. Home care workers paid by Medicaid can’t access PPE in Oregon, according to KATU TV in Portland, Oregon. A survey by the Home Care Association of America, a trade group for private duty agencies, says a survey of 1,200 home care workers found 77 percent don’t have enough masks, reports CNBC.

In South Carolina, one private duty agency has been relying on donated masks, reports the Post and Courier newspaper in Charleston. In New York City, aides have been unable to get PPE from their employers, and instead have gotten it from a grassroots labor organization called National Mobilization Against Sweatshops, reports the Gothamist news outlet.

A story from public radio’s Marketplace program profiles a private duty aide who chose to quarantine with her client for no extra pay. The New Hampshire Union Leader newspaper follows an aide who is serving a different Medicaid client every day in that state.“I employ more front-line workers than some hospitals in New Hampshire do,” Granite State Independent Living CEO Deborah Ritcey told the newspaper.

Home care workers aren’t prioritized to receive PPE from government sources, so HHAs are having to get creative. One agency in Maine has been pursuing nontraditional supply sources such as distilleries making hand sanitizer and a candle factory making face masks, reports WCHS News Center Maine in Portland, Maine.

One agency in Tennessee dedicated one staff member to scour local stores for supplies such as disinfecting wipes, which it couldn’t procure through usual channels, reports the Tennessean newspaper in Nashville.

New option: The franchisor Interim Health-care and its parent company have launched a website to help the home care industry access PPE, PPEforHomeCare.org.“Never wanting to increase burden on the healthcare ecosystem or hope for handouts or donations from the CDC and state governments or private fundraising, we assessed inventory and vetted reputable suppliers ourselves to find a solution,” Interim CEO Jennifer Sheets says in a release.“Now we are opening it up to others. For us this is mission-critical: without PPE we can’t ask our employees to be on the front line of this epidemic, just as we would never ask our armed forces to enter battle unprepared.”

Meanwhile, many Medicaid, private duty, and other home care aides are walking away from their jobs, filing for unemployment and other benefits due to a lack of PPE, fear of contracting or spreading the coronavirus, childcare duties at home, and more, multiple news outlets note.

One problem is the uncontrolled home environment. One Michigan home care nurse recounts entering a patient’s home where 15 adults were congregating, according to the Lansing State Journal newspaper.“The hospitals have locked it down to where there are no visitors coming in,” the nurse said. Home care nurses “don’t know who’s been in and out of homes we’re in,” she told the paper.

New York agencies particularly are having difficulty finding aides to serve new clients who are COVID-19-positive, agency owners told News Day newspaper in Long Island. Agencies are offering aides increased pay, even though reimbursement has not increased from either government or private payor sources, they said.

To help combat such problems in New Hampshire, the state launched a program that provides a $300 weekly bonus for full-time employees and $150 for part-timers, the Union Leader says. At a federal level, lawmakers have proposed increasing front-line workers’ pay levels, News Day notes.

Meanwhile, agency costs are rising as they implement procedures such as telehealth visits, and visit pre-checks via phone to assess patients for COVID-19, Milka Njoroge, CEO of Century Homecare in Worcester, Massachusetts, told the Worcester Business Journal.

The Tennessee agency has had to train its staff on a whole new level of infection control, reports the Tennessean.