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6 days ago | 
mcknightshomecare.com | Liza Berger
The final deadline for entries into the McKnight’s Excellence in Technology Awards program is Friday, June 13. The annual showcase is an opportunity for stakeholders in home care, senior living and skilled nursing to demonstrate leadership and outside-the-box thinking when it comes to today’s tech. Submissions can detail devices and programs of a wide range of cost and complexity.
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1 week ago | 
mcknightshomecare.com | Liza Berger
Never waste a crisis. This certainly seemed to be true for home care during the COVID-19 pandemic. This long-term care setting, which offered a comparably safe alternative to COVID-stricken nursing homes, carved out a unique space for itself during the public health emergency. Looking back, certain areas of home care — due to urgency and the need to prevent the virus from spreading — flourished.
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3 weeks ago | 
mcknightshomecare.com | Liza Berger
You know it may be time to run for higher ground when William Dombi, the usually upbeat former president of the National Association for Home Care & Hospice, issues a dreary forecast. Blame it on his newfound retirement, but Dombi, who is a natural optimist, definitely sounded concerned when asked to characterize the environment right now for personal care, home health and hospice.
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1 month ago | 
mcknightshomecare.com | Liza Berger
Be careful what you wish for. That theme might be resonating with home care providers right about now. Why? Because those who expected the Trump administration to champion deregulation and a hands-off approach might be rethinking that assumption. Between steep Medicaid cuts that would hurt home- and community-based services — no matter the format — to a renewed look at hospice and home health payments, the administration is scouring all corners to save money.
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1 month ago | 
mcknightshomecare.com | Liza Berger
UnitedHealth Group and Amedisys this week entered into agreements to divest certain care, home health and hospice care centers to affiliates of home care firms BrightSpring Health Services and The Pennant Group, according to an 8-K filing dated Thursday. The divestitures are contingent on the completion of UnitedHealth’s acquisition of Amedisys. The acquisition, which has been in the works since 2023, has been beset by federal antitrust scrutiny.
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1 month ago | 
mcknightshomecare.com | Liza Berger
It’s hard to grasp the amount of change happening to the federal government. Between the layoffs at the Department of Health and Human Services and other departments, and the slashing of programs and medical research, the scale and pace of the overhaul are unlike anything we’ve experienced before. A lot of it, to be frank, is unconscionable. Like the cutting of aid for food banks, which help to feed vulnerable seniors in the United States.
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1 month ago | 
mcknightshomecare.com | Liza Berger
While the Accountable Care Organization (ACO) Realizing Equity, Access, and Community Health (REACH) payment model has a focus on equity, it fell short in its first year of enrolling a high-risk beneficiary population in terms of social risk. This may limit its effectiveness in reducing health inequities in Medicare, according to a study released on Friday in JAMA Health Forum.
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1 month ago | 
mcknightshomecare.com | Liza Berger
New York lawmakers are planning to draft legislation to fix problems related to the April 1 transition of the Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program (CDPAP) to a single fiscal intermediary, according to news reports. “Right now, this is not working,” state Assemblywoman Jo Anne Simon, a Brooklyn Democrat, told Spectrum News 1 last week. Among the complaints: Some personal care assistants allege they are not getting paid on time, or have been paid incorrectly for the number of hours worked.
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1 month ago | 
mcknightshomecare.com | Liza Berger
While agency staff on the whole are aware of artificial intelligence’s use in home healthcare, workers generally are not, according to a recent Cornell University study. Workers also for the most part do not understand how AI works, why it may retain their information and that it could replicate bias and discrimination in their workplace.
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1 month ago | 
mcknightshomecare.com | Liza Berger
You know there’s something afoot when the wife of Bruce Willis, who was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia last year, revealed she was writing a book about being a family caregiver. Or when a major movie star makes headlines after he dies a week after his wife — his primary support — passes away from a rare disease. Alex Drane, co-founder and CEO of Archangels, a public benefit corporation devoted to supporting family caregivers, is not surprised.
