National Press Offers Positive Look at Home Health Care

ATLANTA — Home care hit the national news last week and
the good news is, it wasn’t all bad news.

On Saturday, Sept. 19, The New York Times gave a chunk
of its front page over to an article on how several states are
working to help seniors and those with disabilities leave nursing
homes and return to their homes, where they receive their medical
care.

It’s a message that Lee believes the home care sector needs to
communicate more and better, particularly to the federal
government. “I think collectively we need to get the message out
there and work together to utilize our trifecta message and really
make it hit home,” he said.

Lee said he is planning to invite Leland to Medtrade in Atlanta
next month for an up-close-and-personal look at home medical
equipment. It fits in nicely with the theme of the show, which is
consumer advocacy, he said.

The Times article, however, was followed on Sept. 20 by
a direct hit to HME from Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., on a Fox
News “Fox & Friends” segment on scooters.

McCaskill, said the host, suggested “she’s got a way to cut
hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicare without cutting
services to patients in need.”

Her solution: cut any Medicare scooter benefits.

“Well, I don’t know how many ads you’ve seen for scooters on
cable TV, but I’ve seen a lot of them,” McCaskill told Fox’s Chris
Wallace. “Those are scooters paid for by the American people and a
lot of them are going to folks who don’t need scooters. It’s one
example of many examples where we’re paying for services or things
instead of outcomes.”

Her comment drew fire from Fox medical contributor Dr. Mark
Siegel.

“This underlines the irrationality of bureaucrats making health
decisions, and with all due respect to Sen. McCaskill, she doesn’t
know anything about these things I’ve been prescribing my entire
career,” Siegel said. “This is about an independent lifestyle.”

He noted that scooters were for people who are unable to walk
any distance or who have severe back pain.

“Without a scooter, you can’t go shopping, you can’t get the
things you need,” he said.

John Leland’s story, “Helping the Aged Leave Nursing Homes for a
Home,” offered several vignettes of people who had spent time
in nursing homes and how their lives have changed for the better
since moving back to homes of their own, thanks to their state’s
involvement in a program called Money Follows the Person.

Siegel also took issue with the threat to power wheelchair
benefits that appears to be gaining traction in the Senate.

“Think of yourself as paralyzed and needing a motorized
wheelchair,” he said. “My mother-n-law has multiple sclerosis and
she cannot push a wheelchair around and there’s no one to do it for
her. My father-in-law is sick, so she needs a motorized
wheelchair.”

Siegel noted that 67 percent of the people using power
wheelchairs are not elderly; they are disabled, and most of the
disabled are women.

“You know, I don’t really want to see people that really need
this get the device cut,” Siegel said.

He said he was very concerned about the Senate health reform
bill that appears to be “targeting both [scooters and power
wheelchairs] for destruction.”

In his Chairman’s
Mark version of the Senate Finance Committee’s health reform
bill, committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., identified
elimination of the first-month purchase option for power
wheelchairs as a way of making up some of the cost for national
health care.

It bothers him, Siegel said, that the power wheelchair benefit
could be sacrificed in order to provide insurance for people who
don’t have it. “That’s what I call redistribution of care,” Siegel
said. “They take care away from people who need it the most and
[say], ‘Let’s cover people that don’t have it, but may not need
care.’ That is redistribution of care, and I’ve very concerned
about that.”

While Leland’s story says that research on cost savings from the
program “has so far been inconclusive,” an AARP representative said
the program has overturned the notion that once in a nursing home,
always in a nursing home.

“It’s gotten Congress’ attention, and shown that people can
leave a nursing home,” Susan C. Reinhard, senior vice president of
the AARP Public Policy Institute, told the newspaper.
“That is a wakeup.”

The article prompted a letter to the editor from Daniel Lee,
vice president of marketing and business development for Elyria,
Ohio-based Invacare, urging the federal government to follow the
state’s suit.

“National health reform needs to encourage alternatives to
expensive hospitalization and skilled nursing,” Lee wrote. “Home
care is the answer. Home visits by caregivers will help empty
crowded emergency rooms. Home care will shrink the incidence of
hospital-generated complications. Home care will keep the
generations together and strengthen the family.”

In his letter, Lee applauded the article, saying it “further
supports the idea that home care is the trifecta of health care
— it is patient preferred, has better clinical outcomes and
is more cost-effective than institutionalized care.”

Lee said he heard back from Leland after submitting his letter
urging a federal sea change in the way the nation looks at health
care.

“He was right on board with it,” Lee said, noting that Leland
understood the message that home care is the best and most
preferred option for those who, because of age or disability, need
some help in daily living.