Kaiser Health News reports:

In the healthcare world, skilled nursing facilities are often a stop for elderly patients transitioning home from the hospital, but an emerging “hospital at home” model could eliminate that stop by keeping some chronically ill patients at home the whole time.
Kaiser Health News reports:

“Hospital at home” programs fundamentally refashion care for chronically ill patients who have acute medical problems — testing traditional notions of how services should be delivered when people become seriously ill. Only a handful of such initiatives exist, including the Albuquerque program, run by Presbyterian Healthcare Services, and programs in Portland, Ore., Honolulu, Boise, Idaho, and New Orleans offered through the Veterans Health Administration.
But the concept – which has been adopted in Australia, England, Israel and Canada — is getting attention here with increased pressure from the national health overhaul to improve the quality of medical care and lower costs. Hospital at home programs do both, according to research led by Dr. Bruce Leff, the director of geriatric health services research at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore who pioneered the concept.
In a study of three experimental hospital at home programs published in 2005 in the Annals of Internal Medicine, Leff demonstrated that patient outcomes were similar or better, satisfaction was higher and costs were 32 percent less than for traditional hospitalizations.
“It’s a very successful model and in five years, I think it’s going to be very common. But we’re still in the early adoption phase,” said Mark McClelland, an assistant professor at the Center for Health Care Quality at George Washington University.

Despite McClelland’s expectations, this isn’t a model that health care providers are seeing a lot of—so far, at least, says Greg Crist, vice president of public affairs at the American Health Care Association.
“We’d be hard pressed to see much of a market there because of the complexity of the patients,” Crist says, although he acknowledged there is demand for such a model.
Hospital-at-home models can’t offer the efficiency a skilled nursing center can in terms of having multiple staff available to help residents at various points of need, he says. Additionally, a patient receiving these services at home may eventually need certain medical equipment that’s immediately available at a facility, but would take time to obtain in a home setting.
“Around-the-clock care is very expensive, and even though there are Americans who can afford that, we don’t see that being replicated on a massive scale,” he says.
Read the full Kaiser Health News article.
Written by Alyssa Gerace

Money Follows the Person Program

Funding to help older adults access long-term services and supports at home

The Department of Health and Human Services has announced $25 million in funding to help states strengthen their ability to help seniors and people with disabilities access home and community-based long-term services and supports. Funding will support Aging and Disability Resource Centers in nearly every state. Meanwhile, a new Mathematica Research report shows that the Money Follows the Person Program is 36% below its state target for moving low-income elderly and disabled people from long-term care facilities into the community.

$25 million available to give older adults better access to long-term services and

The Department of Health and Human Services is making $25 million available to give older adults better access to long-term services and supports in their homes and communities.
Aging and Disability Resources Centers will benefit from the funding in the next one to three years under the Affordable Care Act, says HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. The funding will help the centers make it easier for people to learn about and access services available in their area, from home care and social supports for daily living to nursing home care.
“We are pleased to make it easier for Americans to get the care and support they need where they need it,” said Secretary Sebelius. “This opportunity, supported by the new health care law, will help states continue to improve their long-term service and support systems.”
The Veterans’ Health Administration (VHA) is making another $27 million of funding available for similar services to veterans.
The initiative, called the Aging and Disability Resource Center Program, is established through a partnership between the newly-formed Administration for Community Living (ACL), the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and the Department of Veterans Affairs’ VHA.
State agencies will be better able to administer and coordinate state and federal long-term service and support (LTSS) programs for seniors with the help of the ADRC program, says HHS.
About eight states will compete to participate in accelerating the development of “single entry point models” in the next couple of years. These “one-stop shop” programs will provide one-on-one counseling to consumers weighing their LTSS options.
“Options counseling is an important tool that can provide custom-tailored advice about all the services available in a person’s community, reducing unnecessary time and energy spent searching for answers in a variety of places,” said Kathy Greenlee, ACL’s administrator and assistant secretary of aging.
ACL will provide funding for up to 40 states in the next year to support current ADRC efforts, in addition to whichever eight states are selected to accelerate program development. This will help them develop a “sustainable infrastructure that is critical to ensuring ongoing coordinated access to services,” says HHS.
Written by Alyssa Gerace