20% of fee-for-service Medicare patients are readmitted within 30 days of discharge, and 34% return to the hospital within 90 days. Reasons cited most often are unclear discharge directions, especially for medications, and lack of follow up communication with caregivers, problems home care is uniquely positioned to mitigate. A new study of ways home care can reduce hospital readmissions is underway with results expected in time for this year’s NAHC Annual Meeting. Delta Health Technologies will underwrite the study, which will be conducted by Fazzi Associates.
Located an hour’s drive from Joplin, HEALTHCAREfirst has a number of employees with friends and family affected by this month’s record-breaking tornado. In one day, they collected over $6,000 for a relief agency and the company added $5,000. “Devastation from the tornado is unimaginable,” said company president Bobby Robertson.
One of our advertisers has been promoting a service designed to aggregate financial information in order to help home care providers make a strong case before Medicaid officials intent on slashing rates. Though the fee to use the site and benefit from its data analyses was extremely low, the company has decided to make it completely free. We spoke with Frank Giannantonio, president of FGA, Inc., to find out what motivated such a move.
Lively discussions are not new within home care’s small telephony vendor community. Never before, however, has a controversy spawned the birth of an entire new organization to address it, nor has it led to such cooperation among competitors. As state Medicaid officials finally begin to appreciate the advantages of Electronic Visit Verification, the way four of them are going about it has raised some serious concerns.
Home Care Technology Report has learned that HealthCareFIRST, a home care and hospice software and services company based in Springfield, Missouri, has acquired 100% of the stock of CareFacts, Inc., a home care and hospice software vendor in St. Paul, Minnesota.
What do these ten technologies have in common? GPS Navigation system
Personal Digital Assistant
Flip Video Camera
MP3 Player
Digital Camera
Handheld Video Game
Notebook PC
Cell Phone
Wrist Watch
TV & Stereo Remote Control
(Click article headline for answer.)
When some organizations have a good year, they often look around for ways to "pay it forward" to express gratitude for their good fortune. Home care software vendor Kinnser Software did not have to look far. In its hometown, Austin, Texas, fully 50% of children raised in foster care wind up on the streets or in prison after they are released from the system. The community established a program to provide housing and help in other ways but it relies entirely on donations. The Austin Children’s Shelter just received a significant donation.
Findings by the National Institute on Aging (a part of the National Institutes of Health), indicate that 30% of Americans ages 65-74 and 47% ages 75 and older have some degree of hearing impairment. An estimated 30 million elders are completely deaf. A new product solves the problem these people often have with telephone communications.
Northwood Homecare began using the CellTrak cellular point-of-care documentation system in the fall of 2009. Over the course of that year, the Halifax, Nova Scotia home care provider has been able to eliminate paper reports, inaccuracies and forgotten tasks at the point of care.
There are about 1,000 hip fractures every day in the United States, over 90% of which are caused by falls. Fatal fall injuries add $179 million to U.S. healthcare costs. Nonfatal fall injuries — most of which are preventable through risk analysis and treatment — cost $19 billion. One technology company founded by experts in Mechanical Engineering and Biomechanics believes it can slash those costs but it needs home care physical therapists to play a role.
