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Care More
09/29/2009

Earlier this year, CareSouth joined the Alliance for Home Health Quality and Innovation (AHHQI). The Alliance is composed of a number of major home health companies across the country as well as a few strategic partners such as NAHC, Simione Consulting and a few others. The purpose of the Alliance is to spread the message of the true benefits both clinically and economically of what we do in the home health care field. A study sponsored by AHHQI and posted on our CareSouth website reveals that home health use saved $1.71 billion for Medicare in 2005-2006.
 AHHQI believes Medicare could realize more than $30 billion in savings for chronic disease patients in the next ten years by expanding access to home health.

Home health care keeps people independent. It helps keep families together and does so with a combination of efficiency and compassion. It is a high technology care delivery system with personalized care in the comfort of a patient's home. This type of care is especially important with patients having chronic conditions that would otherwise have to rely on their families to seek treatment outside of the home at great expense and peril to their health. Home health care actually makes it easier for families to take care of their elderly and sick loved ones through educating those family caregivers, thereby alleviating the need for third party caregivers to intervene. All of the data points to the fact that people recover more quickly and more fully at home when not subjected to life threatening infections and other complications that occur in the hospital.

Finally, while not the most important thing about home health care, one of the big benefits of home health care is that it is actually less expensive than institutional care and in fact eliminates the need in many instances for more expensive institutional care. The average home care visit costs $150 or about $2800 per 60-day episode. The average hospital visit costs over $1,500 per day or $6000 for a four-day stay. Additionally, home health care provided after a hospital visit greatly reduces the likelihood of re-hospitalization.

Home health care is better for the patient, better for the patient's family, and actually saves our healthcare system money.