If home care is looking for some more muscle in Washington, it received some help on Wednesday.
As you’ll read in today’s Home Care Daily, several diverse companies have joined forces to push for policy initiatives that expand access to care at home. The new Moving Health Home coalition is composed of Amazon Care, Landmark Health, Signify Health, Dispatch Health, Elara Caring, Intermountain Healthcare, Home Instead and Ascension.
“We see the home as a part of the spectrum of care, so it’s not like we’re trying to displace primary care offices or hospitals. We want people to be able to choose what’s best for them,” MHH Executive Director Krista Drobac told McKnight’s Home Care Daily Staff Writer Diane Eastabrook.
Among the policy initiatives MHH is advocating for are: expanding services covered in home-based settings and retaining the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ Hospital Without Walls program.
It certainly can’t hurt to have a group of major players working on your behalf, including one with Amazon as part of its name.
Not that policymakers need convincing that home care is becoming popular with, well, everyone. To add to the chorus, this week, a couple of big insurance companies disclosed collaborations with companies in the space. Empire BlueCross BlueShield in New York City said it is working with on-demand healthcare service Ready to offer at-home healthcare services, and Geisinger Health Plan in Pennsylvania disclosed it is partnering with Tomorrow Health, a home medical equipment provider.
Because home care is evolving at such a rapid pace, LeadingAge, the association of nonprofit providers of aging services, on Thursday said it has joined forces with others in the field to co-sponsor the 2021 National Study on Best Practices and Future Insights for the home care and hospice markets. The association encourages all agencies to complete an input survey by Friday, March 12, regarding questions and issues they would like to see the study address.
Support in Washington and new upcoming clinical and operational best practices for the field? The message seems clear: Home care is too important a field to ignore.
Liza Berger is editor of McKnight’s Home Care. Email her at [email protected] and follow her @LizaBerger19.
