Editor’s Picks: One Agency’s Partnership With Uber

This week, Home Health Care News readers discovered one agency’s partnership with Uber and how it’s improving transportation when seniors leave hospitals to go back home. Our readers also tuned in again to the top-10 largest home health providers, while learning more about a bill aimed at increasing home health options. Here in the newsroom, we read up on one state’s lack of a plan to address a rapidly growing senior population.

Most Read

How One Home Care Agency is Partnering with Uber—24Hr HomeCare, a West Coast-based home health care agency serving thousands, has taken advantage of Uber’s latest initiative dubbed UberAssist, a program meant to help seniors get where they need to go in a safe and reliable manner. The goal is to reduce the likelihood of readmission.

Top 10 Largest Home Health Providers—LexisNexis released its 2015 Top 100 Home Health and Hospice Agencies Rankings, placing Kindred Healthcare at the top of the food chain with a 5.81% national market share. HHCN spoke with LexisNexis strategist Chris Golden about trends in home health and consolidation predictions.

Home Health Readmission Numbers Keep Getting Better—The Alliance for Home Health Quality and Innovation recently updated data that shows rehospitalization rates among Medicare patients from a home health setting are on the decline. Alliance Executive Director Teresa Lee cites more streamlined health care delivery as one factor accounting for the lower rates.

Congress Passes Bill to Increase Home Health Options—A measure meant to enable more older adults to stay at home as opposed to moving to a nursing home is making its way through Congress. More specifically, the legislation would allow providers to develop pilot programs to target people at risk of needing a nursing home and some individuals younger than 55, and it has now been sent to President Barack Obama to be signed into law.

Weekend Reads

Utah Has No Plan to Deal with Growing Senior Population, Report Says—Seniors in Utah will account for about 13% of the state’s population by 2030, according to a recently released report, but officials say there’s no statewide plan in place to accommodate them. An article in The Salt Lake Tribune cites nutrition, transportation aid and caregiving as three critical areas on which the state needs to focus.

Written by Kourtney Liepelt