Home Health & Hospice Week

Industry Note:

Counties Close Their HHAs, Hospices

Shrinking margins are leading to more home care closures.

Example #1: Logan County, Ohio is closing its county-run home health agency, reports The Bellefontaine Examiner. Due to increased competition, “we weren’t receiving as many referrals and as many patients, so it just wasn’t financially feasible for us to keep going with home health,” a county official said, according to the newspaper. “We’ve been hearing lately how hard it is for smaller home health programs to make it.”

Example #2: Heart of the Mountains Hospice in Hot Sulphur Springs, Co. is closing its doors, reports 9 News. It was Grand County’s only hospice.

“Rural America doesn’t have the resources or volume of patients in order to make it work more successfully,” executive director Mikee Tennant told the station. “So it’s been a struggle financially.”

“Now medicine is about making money, and there are shareholders and so the profit margin is much more important than it ever was before,” Tennant said.

The county is also closing its home health agency, 9 News reports.

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