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.
As a result, “Making Every Interaction Count” will be an important theme during my tenure as AAHomecare chairman. This theme can be applied to everything we do, from serving patients, to benchmarking with colleagues, to speaking with elected representatives or local media about the importance of home care.
As a former chairman of the Home Care Market Group of the Health Industry Distributors Association, one of the three organizations that merged to form AAHomecare in 2000, I am pleased to become chairman of AAHomecare at a time when the Association is strong and has a focused, unified message to deliver about the value of home care.
Finally, I look forward to working with new AAHomecare President Kay Cox, who I will count on to provide expert advice on communicating to Congress, CMS and the Administration that home care is more than just a Medicare benefit. We see it as an opportunity to create daily miracles in the lives of our patients.
Joel C. Mills is the 2003-04 chairman of the American Association for Homecare in Alexandria, Va. Mills also is chief executive officer of Advanced Home Care in Greensboro, N.C. You can reach him at (336) 878-8950 or by e-mail at: jmills@advhomecare.org. For more information about AAHomecare, call (703) 836-6263 or visit www.aahomecare.org.
