Home Health, Hospice Leadership Lays Out 2025 PrioritiesHome Care Magazine | By Hannah Wolfson “We’ve got to start improving access to home health care, and the way that we do that is we end this march of payment cuts that are being set forward by Medicare,” Landers said at the Alliance’s Homecare and Hospice Conference and Expo, which was held in October in Tampa, Florida. The event was originally organized by the National Association for Homecare and Hospice (NAHC), which merged this summer with the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization (NHPCO) to form the new group. The expo included a handoff from NAHC President Bill Dombi to Landers. The new organization plans to highlight the patient and family perspective to advocate for home health in Washington and beyond, which Landers called a “life or death issue.” “I'm also a family caregiver and have my own personal experiences with homecare and hospice that have instructed how I think about these things,” Landers said. “There is every opportunity here to get stronger, to try to make a bigger impact. … We need to find another way to tell these stories, to somehow get somebody to listen.” This will require getting frontline workers, patients and their families into the offices of decision-makers to tell their stories, Landers said. It may entail additional partnerships with state associations to focus on local advocacy, as well as sharing data from studies that show the positive outcomes in-home care has on patients’ lives. The alliance has automatically enrolled members of both legacy organizations, but Landers said that for renewals or new members, participants will be required to sign an attestation that says they have a program in place for quality and compliance, that they monitor the Office of Inspector General’s expulsion list and don’t take referrals or staff from organizations on that list and that they strive to participate in Medicare’s quality reporting programs. “In order to make a difference on behalf of our members and make a difference on behalf of the people that need care at home, we have to have as credible and high integrity of a voice as possible,” Landers said. Landers spoke before the results of the election were known or the final rule on home health payments was released by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. But even then, he said it would be important for advocates and providers to work for the long haul. “We've got to wake ourselves up … and just keep our energy up, keep our voices up," he said. "So many people are depending on us, and they're hidden. The people that depend on home health and hospice care programs—they're hidden. They're sick, they're in their homes, mostly. Their families are stressed. … We’ve got to keep the volume up and keep telling the story.”… |