An area of commonality between all the hospital, physician and home care outcomes is immunizations.  Two types of immunizations / vaccines are the focus:

1. Influenza
2. Pneumococcal

Immunizations are an integral part of avoiding hospitalization.  Nichol KL, Wuorenma J, and von Stemberg (as cited by the Center for Disease Control, August 6, 2010) report a ‘substantial reduction in hospitalization and deaths among persons aged 65 and greater with influenza immunization’.  Read more...

Perhaps the most publicized topic is hospital readmission rates.  In 2007, MedPAC reported that “17.6% of admissions result in readmissions within 30 days of discharge, accounting for $15 billion in spending.  Not all of the readmissions are avoidable, but some are” (MedPAC, June 2007, p. 103).

The majority of hospital readmission costs are associated with four distinct medical conditions, which lead to over $1.6 billion in spending on readmissions alone.  These conditions include heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), pneumonia, and acute myocardial infarction (AMI) (MedPAC, June 2007, p.116).  Granted these numbers are based upon 2005 Medicare hospital discharges and they could be even higher in 2011.  Read more...

While accountable care has been receiving a lot of press lately, let’s look at the objectives of accountable care, as defined by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (Federal Register, November 2, 2011).  Within the context of the aforementioned final rule, the overarching objectives of accountable care were defined as:

1. Better care for individuals
2. Better health for populations
3. Lower growth in health care expenditures

With so much focus on the hospital and physician providers, how can home care, a lower cost provider, substantively contribute to accountable care objectives?  Read more...

by Keith R. Crownover

No ethical member of the home care community would condone defrauding the Medicare program. The Senate inquiry was not at all a surprise after the April 26, 2010 Wall Street Journal article, which first brought the potential gaming issue to light. The three companies mentioned represent less than 17% of Medicare providers of home care services. The vast majority of home care providers, numbering more than 10,000, provide services that are desperately needed by our senior citizens to recover from surgery, falls and complications from chronic conditions.   Read more...

by Keith R. Crownover

We recently worked with a marketing firm to establish a brand narrative for Delta Health Technologies.  A brand narrative is intended to tell a company’s unique story, the story of their culture, the story of what makes the company different.  The narrative is built by interviewing the company’s staff and customers to understand what is unique about the company, its products and services.   The marketing company, Varsity Branding, then presented three different versions of the narrative to Delta’s leadership to see which of the three resonated as being the most true to the company’s core values and unique value proposition.   Read more...

by Keith R. Crownover

OK. Let’s see. There’s Facebook, of course.  And…LinkedIn, Twitter, HomecareCommunity.org, blogging, MySpace, YouTube, and and countless others.  It seems as though every agency and company on the planet is either attempting to engage their customers via social networking or feeling left out for not having yet done so.  Does it matter?  Is anyone really listening or actually using these tools for something other than FarmVille?  Read more...

by Keith R. Crownover

That name has a poetic ring to it doesn’t it?  That’s not the name of a fictional character in a corny Western but was the given name of my mother who was born Elma LaRue Roub on November 9, 1930.  She wasn’t fictional but she was larger than life to me, my five siblings, her two adult step-children, 15 grandchildren, and 8 great-grandchildren….I could go on and on.   Read more...

by Rhonda Chetney, MS, RN

As a former homecare director of an agency that offered skilled home health, hospice and private duty services, we seldom placed our focus for reducing readmissions on the private duty side of the business.  

As we continue to see constraints from Medicare for home health, such as Face-to-Face visits, more stringent Therapy rules and reimbursement cuts; private duty is emerging as the place where patient’s will receive increasing amounts of care in the home setting.   Read more...

by Joseph E. Fochler

The most expensive Go to Market Participant we can choose is using a direct Sales Force. While the least efficient choice we can make in terms of expense, often the use of a Sales Force can be our most effective choice of reaching our target market and producing the desired results.  Read more...

by Joseph E. Fochler

One in five Americans use social media websites as a source of healthcare information, according to National Research Corporation’s Ticker survey, which bills itself as the largest, most up-to-date poll on consumer healthcare opinions and behaviors.

The survey found that 94 percent of respondents have used Facebook to gather information on their healthcare, 32 percent used YouTube and 18 percent used Twitter.

The National Research survey did not ask specifically what social media presences the respondents checked out, what advice they were seeking or from whom. But there is plenty of evidence that social media users are following health-related feeds.  Read more...