The Benefits Of Home Health Care

Home health care is one of the fastest growing areas of health care today. Home health care, also referred to as “in-home care,” “domiciliary care,” or “social care, is medical care provided by a skilled nurse to a patient in their own home, the home of a family member, or an assisted living facility. “The purpose of home care is to promote, maintain, or restore a patient 's health and reduce the effects of disease or disability. The goal of home care is to provide for the needs of the patient while allowing the patient to remain living at home, regardless of age, social and economic class, or degree of disability” (Encyclopedia of Surgery Online). Individuals who need home health care require some level of medical intervention to promote their

As a result, a growing number of Medicare and Medicaid recipients were transferred into capitated or fixed payment plans to save on costs, but this created a problem in the collection of data because under the fee-for-service plans Medicare was the largest payer of services provided by home health care agencies at 44 percent; Medicaid came in a close second at 38 percent; private insurance and other third-party payers made up 10 percent; and the final 8 percent came from patients who paid directly out-of-pocket. Capitated plans limit the ability to collect data on home health care services because the physician is given one flat fee per the number of patients covered regardless of how many patients he actually provides services to. This makes it difficult to document the specific services provided to the patient, thus making it difficult to justify the need to expand and modify the current program. Another reason data for home health services is so difficult to track is, Medicaid programs in fifteen states have implemented self-directed services which permit patients to coordinate their own home health services and compensate family members who provide care. The implementation of self-directed services in these fifteen states have had positive results in decreasing the amount of unmet patient’s requirements and enriching health outcomes, quality of life, and beneficiary satisfaction at a rate equivalent to that of the traditional home health agency directed service