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.
