HCA, Members Present Home Care Perspective at Legislative Hearing on Telemedicine and Telehealth
HCA and several members this week presented at a roundtable hearing of the State Legislature on telemedicine and telehealth.
The hearing originated out of discussions between HCA and the Legislative Commission on Rural Resources regarding health care policy for rural areas of the state.
Among the presenters at the hearing were HCA Vice President for Clinical Policy Alexis Silver and HCA Members: Michelle Mazzacco (pictured at left), Vice President/Director of the Eddy Visiting Nurse Association; Laurie Neander (pictured second from left), CEO of At Home Care; and Vicky Hines, President and CEO of the Visiting Nurse Service of Rochester and Monroe County.
November 30, 2011
HCA's Member Value Statement
This month, HCA has begun kicking off its member renewal and recruitment efforts.
To provide further information about HCA and our member services, we have published a 2012 Member Value Statement that we urge all applicants to download and review to learn more about the ways in which HCA, New York's premier home care association, can support you in 2012!
Membership applications can be found in the "Membership" menu item on this page, under "Levels"
In recognition of National Home Care Month in November, WNYT News Channel 13 met with a home care patient of the Visiting Nurse Association of Albany, Saratoga and Rensselaer. See the video below, or click here to see the article and watch the video.
For more about National Home Care Month, please see HCA's National Home Care Month website at www.nationalhomecaremonth.com.
October 31, 2011
New Education Program on MLTCs: Positioning Home Care for Success
November 17 — Albany
As New York's home care service delivery system is quickly evolving, many providers are exploring Managed Long Term Care (MLTC) plan models. To support providers in learning more about MLTCs, HCA is offering a full-day workshop on November 17 in Albany to provide information on MLTCs, the regulations governing them, how payments are established, what benefits are covered, how home care agencies can position themselves successfully in partnership with MLTCs, and much more.
During Hurricane Response, Home Care Providers Take Action
In the devastation of Hurricane Irene, home care agencies and their direct-care personnel are playing a crucial role to help those in need before, during, and after the storm.
"Home care providers and their staff are the eyes, ears and voice for many of New York's vulnerable patients during an emergency," said HCA President Joanne Cunningham, noting that, while the public is familiar with the important work of emergency management first responders, home care agencies have a unique role in emergency preparedness and response that may not be widely known.
HCA and Legislative Commission Advance Rural Home Care Initiatives
The Home Care Association of New York State (HCA) is working with the joint Legislative Commission on Rural Resources to advance initiatives aimed at supporting home care services in rural New York at a time of enormous challenges for rural areas and for rural health systems which rely on these critical access community-based programs.
HCA's collaboration with the Commission has yielded state legislation that would provide for: flexibility and regulatory relief for home care services; authority to implement and test innovation in staffing and service; and funding for home health collaboration, affiliation and sustainability of services.
HCA President Joanne Cunningham said: "I applaud the Legislative Commission on Rural Resources, especially its leadership in Senator Young and Assemblywoman Gunther, for working with the home care community on these legislative proposals, which will help alleviate some of the pressures on rural home care agencies through cost-saving regulatory relief, workforce development programs, and incentives aimed at care collaboration — all of which track with state policy and reform goals."
A Statement by Home Care Association of New York State (HCA) President Joanne Cunningham on the Final 2011 State Budget
"This budget is catastrophic for New York’s home care system. It will bring ruin to longstanding home care programs, allows unprecedented government intrusion into home care business operations on a scale unknown to any other area of health care, and it aims a half-billion dollars in unsustainable cuts at an already financially fragile home care service delivery system that is, ironically, saving hundreds of millions of Medicaid dollars to begin with."
The Albany Times Union today published an op-ed by HCA President Joanne Cunningham entitled "Cuomo's plan puts home health care in peril." In the op-ed, Ms. Cunningham writes: "The governor's $1 billion blow to home care will mean that successful, cost-effective home care models will fold, including agencies that have served their communities for decades."
Sen. Lombardi Op-Ed: Preserve LTHHCP From State Budget Threat
In an op-ed published today by the Syracuse Post-Standard, retired State Senator Tarky Lombardi, who sponsored legislation creating New York's Long Term Home Health Care Program (LTHHCP), urges legislative language to protect the program, which is threatened under Governor Cuomo's budget.
Senator Lombardi writes that: "The LTHHCP has been a national model, it has won national awards, and it has been a template for the federal government to craft its home- and community-based waiver programs. It is a proven success that should be expanded and not put in jeopardy of discontinuance."
The op-ed, which provides background about the program, is available here.
March 3, 2011
HCA Testifies at Hearing Against $1 Billion Assault on Home Care
HCA President Joanne Cunningham today delivered testimony before a joint hearing of the Senate Finance and Assembly Ways and Means Committees urging the Legislature's rejection of the disastrous, disproportionate and lethal home care reductions and unfunded wage mandates in the package recently approved by the Cuomo Administration-led Medicaid Redesign Team (MRT): a $1 billion impact to home care, according to updated estimates.
"The disastrous proposals advanced by the MRT pursue a misguided path of direct cuts, unfunded wage mandates and a one-size-fits-all approach to care management that would collapse long-standing, successful program models as part of an unprecedented $1 billion impact on New York's home care system," Cunningham said. "While home care represents 12% of Medicaid, the home care cuts, reduction actions, and unfunded wage mandates total 36% of all provider impacts included in and resulting from the MRT package."
Home Care Advocates Question MRT Process, Medicaid Proposals
The Home Care Association of New York State (HCA) today held its State Advocacy Day in Albany to combat $700 million in cuts to home care that were recently advanced under a package of Medicaid proposals abruptly accepted last week by the Cuomo Administration-led Medicaid Redesign Team (MRT).
"For elderly, chronically ill, and disabled New Yorkers served in home care settings, many of the MRT proposals are potentially catastrophic and all read like a 'cliff-notes' version of policy reform," said HCA President Joanne Cunningham. "These so-called blue-ribbon-panel 'reforms' disproportionately target an area of our health care system — home care — which, ironically, has been proven to be one of the most cost-effective ways to provide appropriate levels of care in the preferred setting for hundreds of thousands of patients across New York."
As part of Advocacy Day, HCA showed a special home care video, available on our Power of Home Care website at www.powerofhomecare.org. HCA also received extensive press coverage of the event. Please see our Facebook page for clips, at www.facebook.com/HCANYS.
February 1, 2011
HCA Responds to Governor's Budget
In response to Governor Cuomo's plan to cut $5.9 billion from Medicaid, including a projected $577 million from home care, HCA president Joanne Cunningham issued a statement to the media saying: "Today Governor Cuomo released a budget containing billions in unprecedented Medicaid reductions, cutting at the heart of New York’s health care system. While providing no details as to how exactly these destructive cuts would be spread across the health delivery system, the Governor's budget speech did, however, single out home care using misinformation and politically-motivated rhetoric, again neglecting crucial facts."
A day before Governor Cuomo is set to release his Executive State Budget proposal, the Home Care Association of New York State (HCA) and New York Association of Homes and Services for the Aging (NYAHSA) have issued an alarming report showing the toll of prior year budget cuts on the financial condition of New York's home care industry.
The report, entitled Vital Signs, is available at here. It shows that prior year state budget cuts have left 70% of home care providers operating in the red, among other key findings.
HCA Creates Medicaid Reform and Budget Blog Website
HCA has created www.powerofhomecare.org, a blog website devoted to state budget and Medicaid reform issues. Check out the site frequently for updates on the latest state budget and Medicaid reform news, advocacy tools, and resources.
January 12, 2011
HCA Issues Blueprint for Home Care Reform and Efficiency
HCA today issued our Blueprint for Home Care Reform and Efficiency, a comprehensive 11-point plan that offers concrete, practical and workable policies for reforming and yielding additional cost-savings in New York's home and community based health care system.
HCA's plan recommends payment reforms, improved patient assessment procedures, better matching and guiding of patients to program options, regulatory relief measures, statutory efficiencies, and new processes for: directing patients into programs with stronger care-management capacity; averting unnecessary and costlier institutionalization; more efficient program management; and partnering with the federal government to share Medicare savings from cost-effective home care models.
HCA Responds to Governor's State of the State Address
In a statement to the media today, HCA President Joanne Cunningham said: "Governor Cuomo's proposed Medicaid stakeholder process can represent a new chance for positive change in the Medicaid program if it promotes efficiency while preserving what is good and workable about our system. It also needs to include all stakeholder voices and must keep to the Governor's pledge of developing sound alternatives to draconian reimbursement cuts."
HCA Responds to Governor's State of the State Address
In a statement to the media today, HCA President Joanne Cunningham said: "Governor Cuomo's proposed Medicaid stakeholder process can represent a new chance for positive change in the Medicaid program if it promotes efficiency while preserving what is good and workable about our system. It also needs to include all stakeholder voices and must keep to the Governor's pledge of developing sound alternatives to draconian reimbursement cuts."
Thanks to aggressive advocacy by the nation's home care community, the federal government has instructed its contractors to delay enforcement of the new physician face-to-face rule for the first quarter of 2011. The rule formally went into effect on January 1, even with the delay in enforcement.
The face-to-face rule was part of the federal health reform legislation. It requires that, prior to certifying a patient's eligibility for Medicare home health, the physician must document that the physician or a non-physician practitioner has had a face-to-face encounter with the patient.
Delaying the face-to-face rule has been a principal feature of HCA's federal advocacy in recent weeks, especially considering the rule's potential to disrupt access to services, its lack of clear compliance guidelines from the federal government, and its unnecessary upheaval of existing provider administrative and care-authorization processes.
The New York Post has published a letter to the editor by HCA President Joanne Cunningham in response to an op-ed about the cost of Medicaid.
Ms. Cunningham writes: "Elizabeth Lynam points to Medicaid spending differences between New York and other states, but New York is different for other reasons — high labor costs, extensive mandates and standards, high taxes and a disproportionate number of chronically ill patients ("Where Cuomo Should Cut Medicaid," Post-Opinion, Nov. 30).
"HCA has advanced numerous legislative proposals for making Medicaid even more efficient," she adds. "While previous governors have been slow to embrace our constructive approach, we look forward to bringing our ideas to the incoming Cuomo administration for its consideration during the upcoming budget."
The Journal News has published a letter to the editor by HCA President Joanne Cunningham about the importance of home care as part of health reform.
"It is time to consider the value of home-based programs, which reduce health-care costs and help patients take control of their health by focusing on chronic disease management and other goals of health reform,"Ms. Cunningham writes.
HCA has also had home care month pieces published in the Buffalo News and Times Union. To read more visit, www.nationalhomecaremonth.com.
November 30, 2010
Legislature Declines Action on Cuts
The State Assembly and Senate convened yesterday but did not act on the Governor's proposal to cut Medicaid rates by 6.7 percent as part of a deficit reduction measure to plug a $315 million current-year budget gap.
See HCA's National Home Care Month advertising campaign (see image to the right);
Read about HCA's National Home Care Month Award Winners; and
View HCA op-eds, letters to the editor and other media outreach being conducted throughout the month of November in recognition of National Home Care Month.
Register NOW for HCA's Clinical and Technology Conference
HCA's signature Clinical and Technology Conference is around the corner, on November 3 and 4 in the Albany area. Please register NOW to benefit from this year's rich lineup of presentations centered on high-priority clinical, technological, and operational learning areas, such as:
Ideas for reducing your agency's rehospitalization rates;
Customer service strategies for home care;
New opportunities in home telehealth and health information exchange;
Best-practices for helping patients who suffer from vision loss; and
Tips for medication management.
The comprehensive array of topics at HCA's Clinical and Technology Conference will suit the educational needs of staff at all levels of your organization, whether you are a home health executive, a director of patient services, a nurse case manager, a health IT professional, or if you serve in any other capacity that directly affects the clinical or technological functions of your agency.
HCA this week launched a new online advocacy system that makes it easy for the home care community to send a message directly to Congressional or State elected representatives on an array of issues. The system is simple. Just click the State or Federal Advocacy buttons above to find a list of issues and links to action items that allow you to send an advocacy message with the click of your mouse. To help us inaugurate the new system,click here to find an advocacy action item aimed at helping us stop cuts to Medicare home health.
August 11, 2010
U.S. House Votes to Extend FMAP Funding
The U.S. House of Representatives has voted to extend vital Federal Medical Assistance Percentage (FMAP) funding to states, like New York, following up on U.S. Senate action last week. The $2.2 billion in FMAP funding includes dollars needed to address a state budget gap that would exist without the FMAP enhancement, though the state is still expected to pursue across-the-board budget cuts as part of a contingency measure, given that the FMAP enhancement isn't enough to address the entire state deficit.
Home Care Association of New York State, Inc.
194 Washington Avenue, Suite 400 · Albany, NY 12210
p: 518.426.8764 · f: 518.426.8788 · e: info@hcanys.org
