VNA & Hospice of Cooley Dickinson Wins Recognition
NORTHAMPTON — Based on newly available results from the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare (CMS) for 2009, the VNA & Hospice of Cooley Dickinson has been awarded special recognition for home care quality in Home Health Compare, a tool that provides detailed information about Medicare-certified home-health agencies.
According to Jeanne Ryan, executive director of the VNA & Hospice of Cooley Dickinson, the ratings demonstrated very high marks in the areas of pain control, ability of patients to walk independently, managing medications at home, and avoiding hospital readmissions. These results, Ryan said, assures the public that “the services provided by the VNA & Hospice of Cooley Dickinson rank among the highest in our local service area.”
The home-health quality measures come from information collected by Medicare- and Medicaid-certified home health agencies. They collect information about Medicare and Medicaid patients who get skilled care. Information is collected about the patients’ health; how they function; the skilled care the patient receives; the social, personal, and support services they need; as well as their living conditions.
Ryan said these quality measures give health care consumers information about how well home-health agencies provide care for their patients. The measures provide information about patients’ physical health and whether their ability to perform basic daily activities improves. Even if a patient’s health condition (such as heart failure or diabetes) is not expected to get better, patients can usually improve how they manage and live with their illness.
According to the online newsletter Aging in Action, significant quality improvements have resulted from Home Health Compare.
In addition, home health care has become a more prominent form of care, especially for people needing post-hospital or nursing-home care. In 2006, $52 billion was spent in the U.S. on home health care, and the CMS expects this number to nearly triple over the next six years. The number of Medicare beneficiaries receiving home-health services increases by roughly 5{06cf2b9696b159f874511d23dbc893eb1ac83014175ed30550cfff22781411e5} per year, and with the new long-term care provisions in the 2010 health care reform bill, this number is expected to significantly increase in the future.
Because of the projected increase in demand, according to Aging in Action, CMS placed a priority on measuring care quality. CMS designed Home Health Compare in the hope of empowering consumer decision making and improving health care quality.
