Patients with end-stage renal disease are faced with a seemingly impossible dilemma as their health deteriorates: try to prolong life with continued treatment or seek end-of-life comfort through hospice. Hospice care—covered by Medicare, Medicaid and most private insurers—is a benefit available to individuals with a life expectancy of six months of less. The way it’s […]
Seeing opportunities to improve quality of care and decrease costs, the home health industry continues to pump resources into specialized care programs for patients with heart failure and related conditions. Despite mandatory bundled payment programs for cardiac care being put on hold, home health providers of all shapes and sizes are doubling down on specialized, […]
The Ensign Group (Nasdaq: ENSG) posted strong first-quarter financial results Thursday, buoyed, in part, by the California-based provider’s particularly profitable home health and hospice businesses. While pursuing expansion plans in both home health and hospice, Ensign reported a consolidated adjusted net income of $24.1 million in the first quarter of 2018, an increase of about […]
Maine and Montana are the top two places to work as a nurse in the United States in 2018, new rankings have found. Hawaii and Washington D.C., in contrast, are the very worst places to work, according to personal finance website WalletHub. In the compilation of the 2018 rankings, states were evaluated on 21 key metrics, including […]
Doulas, known for helping people go through childbirth, are now helping at the end of life as well. Some hospices have seen an opportunity to work with doulas, while others say that their tried-and-true volunteer programs are already providing similar services. Hiring a birth doula—also known as a birth companion or birth coach—has grown increasingly […]
Addus Completes Purchase of Ambercare Frisco, Texas-based Addus HomeCare Corporation (Nasdaq: ADUS) announced Tuesday it has completed its deal to buy Ambercare Corporation, Inc., a personal care, hospice and home health services provider headquartered in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Addus provides home care services to more than 36,000 clients through 142 offices in more than two dozen states. […]
Patients who receive in-home visits from nurses during the day are more likely to end up in the emergency room at night, a new Canadian study has found. The research undermines the long-standing belief that in-home care visits can help reduce hospitalizations, or at least reveals that such evidence is mixed. Patients with both ongoing […]
Home care providers are increasingly turning away from traditional marketing and ad services to find new clients and generate revenue. In 2017, providers favored Internet marketing that leveraged search engine optimization (SEO), or ways for consumers to best find care providers on their own. That’s according to Home Care Pulse’s 9th Annual Edition of the Home Care […]
Since launching in 2016, U.K. home care startup Cera Care, which pairs patients with in-home caregivers, has locked in more than $4 million in venture funding and garnered widespread praise. But now, it’s being accused of crafting fake reviews online and lying about key health partnerships, Bloomberg Technology reported Thursday. Citing “three people with knowledge of […]
Policymakers in two of the largest U.S. states—Illinois and California—are moving forward with plans to increase wages for some home care workers. In Illinois, state senators on Tuesday passed legislation that would effectively boost home care workers’ wages by at least $1 per hour from the current average of $10.98 per hour by July 1, 2018. Under the legislation, […]