Creating Daily Miracles

As many of you know, I was privileged to have been elected chairman of the board of directors for the American Association for Homecare at the Association's Washington Legislative Conference last month. In June, more than 200 representatives of the home care profession came together in the nation's capital to share with members of Congress their personal stories about the value of home care and about the contribution that our profession makes, not only to the lives of the patients we serve but to the health care continuum within our communities and to the local and national economy as well.

At the conference, we addressed the “big-ticket” issues: opposition to national competitive bidding and to a Medicare home health co-pay, and support for a rural home health benefit add-on and for a market basket update for home health agencies. As we lobbied these issues, not once did we lose sight of those people who will be affected most by Congress' actions — our patients.

I believe very strongly that we must make every effort to “humanize” these issues by putting a patient face on home care. We simply cannot discuss the compassionate, high-quality and cost-effective health care we provide to people in their homes without emphasizing the day-to-day, one-on-one interactions that change people's lives.

Through the innovative equipment and caring services that home care provides, we are truly creating daily miracles in individual households, entire communities and ultimately, the whole nation. We need to work with patients, consumer groups, medical societies and our coalition partners in sharing these stories and expanding on our message about the value of home care.

Our profession is being called upon to provide home care services to a growing, increasingly diverse population and to operate within a health care system that seeks to minimize acute care costs — and we are rising to that challenge. As we are asked to do more, however, we should be able to count on a stable — or preferably, a supportive — economic and regulatory environment in which we can meet the needs of our nation's health care system.

Making Every Interaction Count

Having worked in home care for all of my professional career, I know that this is a tenacious and resourceful industry, one in which change and challenge are part of our daily lives. I know that I am not alone when I say that, to meet my patients' and employees' needs, I have had to maximize every opportunity.