Home Care Daily - National Home Care Industry News

As more legislators become aware of the impact home health care has on elderly and disabled adults, they also discover that relatively and traditionally low wages are hampering agencies’ abilities to attract, hire, and retain valuable caregivers. Recently, legislation was put forward in Massachusetts to try and help secure vital caregivers for the aging population in the state.

A social services pilot program designed by HUD (the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development) is aimed at determining the value that receiving healthcare services at home can offer aging and disabled seniors. The focus of this program is to find out how effective it can be at not only providing an option for aging seniors to remain home, but to also reduce long-term health care costs in the country.

Congress is seeking to bolster the home care industry with new legislation. Even though it’s the number one job creator in the country, and that trend is expected to continue for another five or 10 years, at least, stagnantly low wages make it exceedingly difficult for agencies and other businesses to retain valuable caregivers.

When CMS (the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services) slashed reimbursement rates for home health care, it placed significantly more pressure on the industry itself. Out of this pressure, though, came innovation. A lot of the innovation was in the form of technology and it has impacted millions of lives in the years since.

It’s no secret that technology is part of the major driver helping to improve care for millions of clients relying on home health care services. There are numerous technological innovations, including devices and apps, that allow people to stay in close communication with their doctors and nurses and also monitor their health.

Worrying about how Medicaid reimbursement cuts could affect the in-home health care sector is certainly reasonable, especially after the last round of cuts forced too many independent agencies to either sell out to larger companies or close their operations altogether. 

It’s a sad state of affairs when an elderly and/or disabled adult, especially somebody who has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s or another type of dementia, is abused, and while the home care industry as a whole has fought diligently to eradicate these abuses and neglect of its clients, there continue to be cases that impact the lives of not just the abused client and their family, but the industry across the country. 

With the rising demand for in-home care support services, especially home health care in the form of visiting nurses, there are several challenges that need to be faced. One of them involves a shortage of available visiting nurses.