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Home Health & Hospice Week

Industsry Notes:

Tap New Market For Private Pay Home Care

Published on Thu Mar 25, 2004

Reverse mortgages may become more popular as financial institutions focus resources on raising awareness of them.

Reverse mortgages allow homeowners age 62 and older to tap into their home's equity without having to sell or make loan payments. They can continue to live in their home without having to repay any of the loan until they sell, move out or die.

Seniors can use reverse mortgage funds to pay for home care services ranging from private duty nursing to having a wheelchair lift installed.

The number of federally insured reverse mortgages issued nationally jumped 39 percent in fiscal 2003, to 18,097, reports The Boston Globe. During the first four months of the current fiscal year, 8,700 federally insured reverse mortgages were issued -- a 76 percent increase over the same period last year.

Top lenders aren't waiting for seniors to find out about the mortgages on their own, reports the trade publication The American Banker. They are reaching out to financial advisers, insurance agents and other trusted intermediaries to spread the word.

Irvine, CA-based Financial Freedom Senior Funding Corp., a subsidiary of Lehman Brothers Bank, has announced a seven-employee division focused solely on assisting nonlender financial intermediaries and developing affinity relationships related to reverse mortgages, the Banker says.

  • At least a few states are coming to their senses about home care. New Jersey Gov. James E. McGreevey (D) has signed an order directing the state's Department of Health and Senior Services to develop a plan to improve and create alternative long-term care programs for the elderly -- namely home care, reports The New York Times.

    The move was in response to an AARP report calling for seniors to be able to use their long-term care dollars in their setting of choice, reports The (Bergen County, NJ) Record.

    And Rhode Island will end up paying more for seniors' care if the state fails to fully fund home care programs, driving seniors into nursing homes, RI Lt. Gov. Charles Fogarty (D) said in an address to seniors March 22.

    The state's Department of Elderly Affairs put a freeze on its home care program for low-income seniors as part of government cost-cutting measures, reports the Associated Press. Sending beneficiaries to nursing homes costs up to $53,700, compared to the $2,505 subsidy for home care, Fogarty said.

  • Powerful Senate Ways and Means Committee Chair Charles Grassley (R-IA) will hold an April 7 hearing on President Bush's New Freedom Initiative -- the push to allow elderly and disabled people to stay in their homes and communities.

    "Since folks want to stay in their homes and communities for as long as possible, government programs should help them do that," Sen. Grassley says in a release. The initiative "looks like a forward-looking way to cut government bureaucracy and support the kind of care everybody wants."

    The hearing specifically will address measures proposed in the President's 2005 budget, including demonstration projects reimbursing states fully for the first year of Medicaid home care for patients who move from long-term care facilities to home, and increasing the recruitment and retention of direct care workers.

  • Community LIFE in Allegheny County, PA will become the newest PACE provider, CMS says. Community LIFE runs Program of All-inclusive Care for the Elderly centers in Homestead and McKeesport, PA. PACE providers receive a fixed monthly fee to arrange and cover frail seniors' total health care needs to keep them in their homes.

  • Slashed Medicaid payment rates in Connecticut contributed heavily to the fallen earnings reported by Scarsdale, NY-based National Home Health Care Corp. NHHC recorded net income of $1.1 million on revenues of $22.9 million for the quarter ended Jan. 31, compared to a $1.5 million profit on $24.6 million in revenues for the same quarter in 2003. Increased caregiver payments and workers compensation costs also reduced net income, NHHC says.

  • DMEPOS and respiratory company Critical Home Care Inc. has signed a letter of intent to purchase an unnamed "national provider of staffing and home care services" as well as a mail service pharmacy. The acquisition target has offices in 22 states and revenues of more than $80 million, the Westbury, NY-based company says.

    The deal is contingent upon a number of regulatory and other approvals.

  • A personal care assistant in Nevada who billed two different home health agencies for services performed on just one patient got caught by Medicaid fraud fighters.

    Janice Proctor was sentenced March 1 for not speaking up about the extra payments she received, and was ordered to repay Nevada Medicaid $1,110. According to Attorney General Brian Sandoval, her two-year sentence was suspended in favor of a two-year probation.

  • Two HHA owners and the owner of a home health staffing business were convicted on charges related to Medicare fraud committed from 1995 to 2002, AP reports. Husband-and-wife Robbie Lesa Hames and Charles William Hames, owners of Alternate Nursing Care in Irving, TX, were convicted on a multitude of charges ranging from conspiracy to commit fraud to obstructing a federal officer to money laundering. They were charged with inflating their expenses on Medicare cost reports.

    Prosecutors said the Hameses used their ill-gotten Medicare proceeds to pay for a painting of a dragon in their pool and to have Michelangelo murals pasted on their home's ceiling. The couple were arrested in Spain after fleeing there when called to appear before a grand jury, AP says.

    They face up to 135 years and 145 years in prison, separately, and must forfeit more than $400,000 as well as real estate in Irving.

    James Michael Davis, owner of Accelerated Home Health Personnel Inc., was convicted of many of the same fraud counts as the Hameses. Davis faces up to 35 years in prison and was ordered to forfeit more than $500,000, AP says.

  • A whistleblower picketed a Shreveport, LA HHA March 18 to collect a February 2002 court-ordered judgment of more than $25,000, reports The (Shreveport) Times. Becky Roberts was a former corporate nurse for National Home Care Services and was placed on administrative leave in 2000 after she reported the agency to the HHS Office of Inspector General for fraud, according to the paper. Roberts subsequently secured two judgments against National.

    Mel Whitworth, owner of Best Home Health, bought National after Roberts' judgment, the Times says. Whitworth and Best still haven't paid up on the settlement, Roberts protested during her eight-hour picket.

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