Legislative Priorities: Provision of Home Health and Hospice Services

Legislative Priorities
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Legislative Priorities
Home healthcare and hospice services present a great opportunity in improving the American healthcare system. According to Landers et al. (2016), a shift towards home-based care models is an important part of addressing the American healthcare system’s challenges, including the burden of chronic disease in an aging population and high care costs. However, several changes need to be made through legislation for home healthcare and hospice to be accessible and beneficial to Americans. The purpose of this paper is to identify three legislative priorities for home healthcare and hospice services, explain why they are a priority, and discuss how they affect the home care and hospice industry.
The National Association for Home Care and Hospice (NAHC) often shares important information about legislation that can influence the home healthcare and hospice industry (NAHC, n.d.). Based on this information, the three legislative priorities identified are:
1 Protect and maintain access to telehealth services for Medicare beneficiaries
Telehealth services have been associated with a myriad of benefits in providing effective care to patients. According to Pogorzelska-Maziarz et al. (2021), telehealth offers convenient and cost-effective care to patients in the comfort of their homes. It is also an effective way to maintain communication and problem-solving between home healthcare nurses and physicians. People need assurance that they will have continued access to care regardless of what is going on in the world. Based on these benefits, protecting and maintaining access to telehealth services for Medicare beneficiaries is a legislative priority for home care and hospice services. As NAHC (2016) reveals, the use of technologies to remotely monitor patients, collect and exchange their clinical information, and keep track of their health is important in enhancing effective home healthcare services delivery. As such, access to telehealth services for Medicare beneficiaries, especially in a home setting, should be given priority and protected under the law. NAHC (n.d.) indicates that the declaration of a public health emergency in response to the COVID-19 pandemic allowed flexibility in the use of telehealth services in a home setting. As a result of this flexibility, more Americans were able to access telehealth services in the comfort of their home while reducing the risk of exposure to and spreading the virus. The flexibility included removing site and geographic restrictions so that Medicare beneficiaries across the country could receive telehealth services in their homes.
While this flexibility was instituted in response to the pandemic, the flexibility needs to be maintained even after the pandemic. The NAHC is supporting two bills that will protect and maintain the current access to telehealth services for Medicare beneficiaries even after the pandemics. The first one is the CONNECT for Healthcare Act 2021, which aims at ensuring that the restrictions are permanently removed to promote telehealth services delivery at home healthcare (NAHC, n.d.). The second one is the Home Health Emergency Access to Telehe...