Home Health & Hospice Week

Where does your state rank in availability of scarce staffing resources?

If you're a New Hampshire agency looking for nurses to hire, you may be in luck.

That state has the highest number of registered nurses per capita, says a new study conducted by the Center for Health Workforce Studies at the University at Albany's School of Public Health.

New Hampshire has 1,283 RNs per 100,000 population, says the study based on 2004 data. South Dakota, North Dakota, Massachusetts and Maine completed the top five states. California has the highest number of RNs at more than 200,000, but the fewest RNs per capita at 588 per 100,000.

Aides: New York had the highest rate of home health aides per capita at 540 per 100,000. That's more than seven times the rate in Georgia, which had the lowest at 70, according to the study.

Social workers: Maine, Delaware, Vermont, Connecticut, and Massachusetts were the top five states for social workers per capita. Rhode Island, Kentucky, Washington, Idaho and Texas had the fewest.

"The success of the health care system in the United States depends on qualified personnel to provide needed health care services," Jean Moore, director of the Center and one of the authors of the study, says in a release. "Access to care, quality of care, and costs of care are all affected by the availability of properly educated and trained workers."

The full 159-page report is at www.albany.edu/news/pdf_files/U.S._Health_Workforce_Profile_October2006_11-09.pdf.

• Regional Home Health Intermediary Associated Hospital Service has updated its flu manual for 2006/2007, it says in a message to providers. The changes address topics including National Provider Identifier numbers and new HCPCS codes, AHS says.

• HHAs served by RHHI Palmetto GBA are seeing a computer glitch that hits them in the wallet. When a final claim for a home health episode finalizes, the payment for that episode's Request for Anticipated Payment (RAP) is being recouped because the RAP and final claim aren't linked in the claims system, Palmetto reports on its Web site.

The Fiscal Intermediary Shared System "is currently working on this issue," Palmetto promises. "Providers who are receiving rejections as a result of overlapping dates of service are asked not to re-submit any rejected final claims until further notice."

• The new interest rate for Medicare overpayments and underpayments is 12.375 percent effective Oct. 18, according to Transmittal 108 (CR , dated Oct. 12. That's down from 12.625 percent.

• National Home Health Care Corp. reported mixed earnings for the quarter ended July 31. The Scarsdale, NY-based provider saw net income of $900,000 on revenues of $25.3 million for the quarter, compared to a $308,000 profit on revenues of $25.8 million for the same period in 2005.

• Matria Healthcare Inc. saw a significant rise in earnings in the latest quarter. The Marietta, GA-based disease management provider reported net income of $22.7 million on revenues of $84.2 million for the quarter ended Sept. 30, compared to a $6.4 million profit on $46.3 million in revenues for the same period last year.

Matria sold its diabetes businesses this year to "become a pure play, totally focused in the wellness and disease management sector of healthcare," CEO Parker Petit says in a release.

Those divestitures, plus a 2004 sale of its pharmacy and supplies businesses, "provided the capital to build our strong technology and informatics base for our disease management operations," Petit notes.

• Baltimore-based Calvert Health Partners recently acquired three private home health agencies covering 30 counties throughout Virginia.

Terms of the transactions were not disclosed. The three agencies are Advantage Care of Shenandoah, serving western Virginia/Shenandoah Valley area; Home Care Connection of Richmond; and Tama Health, which serves the Norfolk and Virginia Beach market. Calvert Health intends to operate the companies under its tagline: "Connecting Home and Health."

• A new two-week rehabilitation regimen may help stroke survivors who have lost the function of one arm, according to new research from the National Institutes of Health.

Researchers supported by the NIH conducted the study, which the agency says is the largest and most comprehensive to date for constraint-induced movement therapy. The study's results were featured in the Nov. 1 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association.

Constraint-induced movement therapy seeks to train a weakened hand and arm through repetitive exercises, while the unaffected limb is restrained with a mitt similar to a boxing glove, according to the NIH news release. The restraint of the unaffected hand forces the wearer to use the affected hand and arm.

More information is at www.nih.gov/news/pr/oct2006/ninds-31.htm.