Home Health & Hospice Week

Are you ready to report all threatening abuse from patients?

Elara is far from the only company wrestling with how to safeguard workers in patients’ homes. And soon, lawmakers may take it out of home health and hospice agencies’ hands.

How? State legislators may look to Connecticut’s recently passed law that addresses home care worker safety as a blueprint for their own laws and rules, industry observers suggest.

This legislation “could affect the whole country,” one source close to the matter tells AAPC. And it could determine whether — and how — agencies are able to provide behavioral health and other services to patients deemed a risk.

On May 6, the Connecticut House passed Senate Bill 1, which was approved by the state senate on May 2. At press time, the bill awaited the governor’s signature. Among other things, the bill requires agencies to collect and provide to assigned employees this information about relevant patients:

• history of violence toward health care workers, substance abuse, and domestic abuse;
• diagnoses, including psychiatric history, and the stability of those conditions;
• violent acts contained in judicial records;
• sex offender registry information;
• the location where services will be provided and its crime rate (if known); and
• the presence of any hazardous materials such as used syringes and guns.

However: No agency “shall deny the provision of services to a client” based on this information or the patient’s willingness to provide it, the bill also instructs.

And the bill requires agencies to report to the state “each instance of verbal abuse that is perceived as a threat or danger by a staff member of such agency, physical abuse, sexual abuse or any other abuse by an agency client against a staff member of such agency and the actions taken by the agency to ensure the safety of the staff member.”

The bill also requires annual worker safety training and monthly safety assessments.

And it offers a possible “rate enhancement” for timely reporting to the state of “any workplace violence incident.”

Most provisions would take effect on Oct. 1.

Under the bill, the state will also start providing home care worker safety grants in 2025 to fund things like safety escorts and software to share safety information.

State lawmakers passed the bill over providers’ protests that it was impractical, if not impossible, and would prevent the provision of home care. They did, however, exempt hospice from the requirements.

Note: The latest bill activity and its text are at https://cga.ct.gov/asp/cgabillstatus/cgabillstatus.asp?selBillType=Bill&which_year=2024&bill_num=1.