Greetings and Happy Friday,

I’ve included a few highlights of recent activity. As always, please let me know if you have any questions.

Covid

The Covid war rages on and there are, once again, many uncertainties. Some conference have gone virtual, others are requiring vaccines or negative tests. We are developing options to consider for our Annual Meeting.

A mandate now requires that all nursing home staff be vaccinated. We will keep our ears open to whether this will extend to home health. This message comes from Bill Dombi:

“We don’t know whether this is where CMS stops in terms of using its power of the purse relative to mandating vaccinations,” Bill Dombi, president of the National Association for Home Care & Hospice (NAHC), told HHCN. “All provider sectors are probably on alert that CMS will be looking in their direction — meaning home health and hospice as well.”

Advocacy

Choose Home S. 2562

The Choose Home bill have been introduced in the US Senate and we are awaiting finalization of house authors. Your voice is needed!! Neither of our Senators have signed on a sponsors yet and I’m asking you to send a note to ask for their support (thank you to the two of you who have already done so!). I’ll be back to ask for your advocacy once we have a House bill also.

This bill calls for a cost-effective, patient preferred home health Medicare benefit. This is a brief overview:

Patient meets SNF benefit eligibility
Patient resides at home
Receive expanded HH benefit and home based extended care services with use of approved discharge planning tool. The services will include a mix of skilled, personal care and telehealth services.
Payment combines home health amount and fixed add-on for expanded services
Savings are assured with payment not to exceed 80% of SNF 30 day payment amount, with savings as much as $11,800 per patient; minimum savings of $5080 as compared to a SNF stay

Advocacy Committee

The Advocacy Committee began discussions around priority issues for the upcoming session. We are fortunate to have the opportunity to think broadly and with a new lens with all of our priority issues passing this year! We also agree to meet with the MN First Provider Alliance (PCA alliance) to discuss potential collaboration. This first meeting is occurring next week.

City of Mpls Minimum Wage

I finally had the opportunity to have a dialogue with someone from Mayor Frey’s office regarding the impact the minimum wage ordinance is having on PCA and homemaker services. We asked that they consider utilizing pandemic related funds to cover the gap and we are discussing collaboration with us for alignment of reimbursement with minimum wages.

Council of State Home Care Associations Conference

We had another excellent conference this year and as always I came home with a variety of ideas and resources. A couple to share:

· I learned that BKD will provide data-specific reports to state associations. I am interested in getting these reports and having them presented to the board by BKD.

· Berry Dunn is doing a survey that is expected to be the most comprehensive study on the delivery of care at home to date. The results will include best practices on the topics of staffing, reimbursement, new care delivery models, palliative care, and more. Participating agencies will receive exclusive access to an interactive portal with detailed benchmarks and insights that can be segmented by size, outcomes, and more. And state associations that have significant participation will benefit from a no-cost presentation of the results. They also have the intention of learning more about how agencies have secured the 5-Star rating. With this being a hot topic for MN, I am very interested in getting significant participation. As of last week 15 agencies had registered for this upcoming survey so we had 10-15 more to meet that goal. If you are a Medicare Certified agency, will you please consider registering? The commitment is 2-hours to complete the study surveys over a period of three months. I believe it will be valuable for you and your agency, as well as MHCA!

Have a wonderful weekend!

Be Well,

Kathy Messerli

Executive Director

Minnesota Home Care Association

1265 Grey Fox Road, Suite 2 | Arden Hills, MN 55112-6929

Direct: 651.635.0038 | Main: 651.635.0607