Home Health & Hospice Week

With more than a third of hospitalized Medicare beneficiaries discharged to home care, you can bet law- and policymakers will ratchet up expectations for home care providers to curb rehospitalizations.

More than 37 percent of hospitalized Medi-care beneficiaries are discharged to home health, said Jennie Harvell with the HHS Office of the Assistant Secretary of Planning and Eval-uation (ASPE). Of those benes, 28 percent are readmitted to the hospital, Harvell told attendees of the National Association for Home Care & Hospice’s March on Washington meeting March 18.

In a recent survey, home health agencies needed more patient data than any other provider type for care planning, Harvell said. That may be because “they are out on their own,” seeing the patient in the home setting, she added.

CMS recently has started financially penalizing hospitals with overly high readmission rates. Don’t be surprised to see that methodology applied to home care payments eventually, industry ob-servers predict.