HCA Media Advisory on Upcoming Home Health Awards Ceremony

For Planning Purposes Only: November 3, 2008

Contact:
Roger L. Noyes (518) 810-0665; (518) 275-6961 cell

Download: HCA Media Advisory on Upcoming Home Health Awards Ceremony

***MEDIA ADVISORY***

HCA to Present Home Health Aide and Home Telehealth Awards in Honor of National Home Care Month

Who: The Home Care Association of New York State (HCA) and home care aide and nurse awardees

What: Home health aide and nurse telehealth awards

When: Wednesday, November 5, at 6:45 p.m. (During HCA's Clinical and Technology Conference)

Where: Holiday Inn Wolf Road (in the Phoenix Room), 205 Wolf Rd., Albany, NY

The Home Care Association of New York State (HCA) invites you to join us for a special awards ceremony at our November 5 Clinical and Technology Conference in honor of National Home Care Month where we will pay tribute to home care clinical personnel for their extraordinary commitment to providing quality, compassionate in-home patient care.

This year's home health aide awardees include: Denise Fitzgerald of Troy, NY-based Eddy Visiting Nurse Association for her care of patients living in the city of Albany and James Wilson of Bayside, NY-based St. Mary's Community Care Professionals for his exceptional care of a 12-year-old patient with special needs. HCA is also honoring a Nurse Telehealth Champion at this year's award ceremony: Rodney Clements, LPN, of the Livingston County Department of Health, for his work championing Livingston County's telehealth program.

Home telehealth includes a range of technologies that allow home care clinical staff to monitor patients remotely through video or data links as a supplement to routine in-home visits. Home telehealth encourages patients to invest in their own disease management, extending the eyes, ears and touch of home care. It also reduces hospitalizations, the incidence of emergent care and the overall cost of health services utilization. In fact, a recent study by economist Robert Litan found that widespread use of remote-monitoring systems could cut the nation's health care costs by $197 billion over the next 25 years. HCA and our provider members throughout New York State have been at the forefront of home telehealth, most notably through our work with the State on developing a home telehealth rate model under Medicaid for high-risk patients.

Considered to be a less-costly alternative to care provided in the nursing home or hospital setting, home care encompasses a broad spectrum of health, therapeutic and social services delivered at home to persons with disabilities as well as patients who are chronically ill or recovering from an illness. Home care patients include newborns requiring maternal-infant care services, children in need of therapy services, elderly patients whose chronic medical condition requires skilled nursing care or home health aide assistance, technology-dependent patients who depend on life-sustaining home medical equipment, and many others.

To learn more, visit HCA's National Home Care Month website at http://www.hca-nys.org/homecaremonth/

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