Despite Strong Bipartisan Support, Choose Home Facing Roadblocks

Home Health Care News | By Patrick Filbin
 
Although Congressional support continues to grow for the Choose Home Care Act of 2021 in Washington, D.C., the legislation remains in limbo.
 
Other pieces of legislation for lawmakers have pushed the Choose Home bill down the priority list, but National Association for Home Care & Hospice (NAHC) President William A. Dombi is hopeful something will come of it soon.
 
“Priorities in Washington became politics,” Dombi told Home Health Care News last week at the Capital+Strategy conference. “The amount of air in Washington to deal with new things kept disappearing.”
 
Choose Home — among other things — supports in-home care alternatives to skilled nursing facilities (SNFs). If enacted, the legislation would enable certain Medicare patients to receive extended care services as an add-on to the existing Medicare home health benefit for 30 days following a hospital stay.
 
In addition to receiving skilled nursing or rehabilitation services from their home health provider, for example, a patient could potentially receive meals, non-emergency transportation, remote patient monitoring and more.
 
The idea is to give today’s highly diversified in-home care providers more flexibility and financial support to keep at-risk Medicare beneficiaries at home and out of costlier facility-based settings, in turn saving the U.S. health care system hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
 
Endorsed by the AARP and supported by a long list of home-based care advocates, Choose Home started gaining momentum on Capitol Hill early in 2021.
 
Now that Congress is through the budget and the U.S. government is trying to figure out how to properly aid and assist Ukraine, there should be time for Choose Home in political schedules, Dombi said.

Read Full Articles