While Home Infusion Is The Next Big Thing In Home-Based Care, Barriers Remain

Home Health Care News / By Audrie Martin
 
The home infusion industry is experiencing significant growth due to the increasing number of aging patients wanting to remain in their homes. However, like many areas of home-based care, reimbursement isn’t keeping up with the cost of care. 

Driven by an emphasis on cost-effectiveness, containment and the desire for patients to remain at home while recovering from illness, home infusion is cited as a $19 billion industry made up of more than 900 providers serving 3.2 million patients annually, according to the National Home Infusion Association (NHIA). Home infusion’s overall contribution to the health care system is significant, as the system cost of infusion therapy administered in the home is usually less than the cost of inpatient treatment. 

“The home infusion industry has experienced significant growth in the past decade spurred by the aging population, payer initiatives to promote lower-cost sites of care and high patient satisfaction,” NHIA President and CEO Connie Sullivan told Home Health Care News. “We believe the industry will continue to grow for these same reasons, and due to the robust pipeline of new therapies requiring infusion.” 

Under fee-for-service (FFS) Medicare, home infusion therapy (HIT) involves the intravenous or subcutaneous admission of drugs or biologicals to an individual at home. 

“Data shows patients overwhelmingly prefer to receive care in their homes when able,” Kristen Fano-Schultze, vice president of home infusion at Compassus, told HHCN. “Since COVID, Compassus has seen an increase in demand for home infusion therapy, which allows patients to receive high-quality intravenous therapy treatment for acute and chronic diseases wherever they call home.”. . .

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AARP's New CEO Vows to Protect Social Security and Medicare, and Ensure Older Adults Age 'On Their Own Terms'

Fortune / By Alexa Mikhail

It’s a salient time for the AARP, the non-profit that has been advocating for the over 110 million American adults aged 50 and over, and championing policies and resources to improve their lives since 1958. 

The reality of a rapidly growing population of older adults (10,000 Americans turn 65 each day), has laid bare the lack of solutions in place to support people physically, mentally, and financially as they age. Against this backdrop, there’s new uncertainty about how changes to health care policies and safety nets under a Trump presidency will affect the lives of older adults.

To lead the non-profit into these headwinds, the AARP, which has 38 million paying members, announced Tuesday the appointment of Dr. Myechia Minter-Jordan as its CEO.
“This is an important time for the country, and we know that older adults have acutely felt the strain of inflation, cost of living, and healthcare costs over the past several years,” Minter-Jordan tells Fortune. “Our top priority will always be to work with Washington and states around the country to protect Social Security and Medicare, and expand ways to support financial security and well-being so people can age with dignity and on their own terms,” she says.

Minter-Jordan, who has previously held roles as president and CEO of CareQuest Institute for Oral Health and CEO and chief medical officer of The Dimock Center in Massachusetts, replaces Jo Ann Jenkins, who was appointed in 2014.  

Also among her top priorities, is what she calls one of the biggest concerns for AARP members: advancing support for the 48 million American caregivers who are “often with great financial and emotional stress and without adequate support.” To do so, she plans to push for policies like the bi-partisan national Credit for Caring Act in addition to tax credits for caregivers. 

“We look forward to working with national and state officials to make these happen,” she says. 

When it comes to how Minter-Jordan plans to work with companies, she draws attention to the data and a need to address ageism at work at scale. One-fifth of workers 65 and older were employed in the U.S. last year—and as people live longer, the workforce age gap is only widening. 

Older workers are integral for the strength of businesses. Research shows that older workers are more loyal to companies, and that intergenerational teams are more productive and meet or exceed management’s expectations compared to teams that do not have a wide age range. Despite this, older workers don’t feel supported in workplaces and many struggle to find jobs.

“[Businesses] must invest in supporting older workers, who in turn, are a valuable asset to their productivity,” Minter-Jordan says. 

Those 50 and older are a powerful group politically and economically: they turned out in record numbers to vote in the Nov. 5 elections, and also spent a combined $8.3 trillion in 2018—a number expected to jump to nearly $27 trillion by 2050. 

Brain-Training Games Remain Unproven, but Research Shows what Activities do Benefit Cognitive Functioning

The Conversation / By Ian McDonough and Michael Dulas

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Some 2.3 million of U.S. adults over 65—more than 4%—have a diagnosis of dementia. But even without a diagnosis, a certain amount of cognitive decline is normal as age sets in.

And whether it's due to fear of cognitive decline or noticing lapses in cognition when we are stressed, many of us have had moments when we thought we could use an extra cognitive boost.

The good news is research has shown that people can make changes throughout adulthood that can help prevent or delay cognitive decline and even reduce their risk of dementia. These include quitting smoking and properly managing blood pressure.

In addition to these lifestyle changes, many people are turning to brain-training games, which claim to optimize your brain's efficiency and capacity at any age. The makers of brain-training apps and games claim their products can do everything from staving off cognitive decline to improving your IQ.

But so far these claims have been met with mixed evidence.

We are cognitive neuroscientists who focus on brain health across the adult lifespan. We study how the brain informs cognition and the ways we can use brain imaging to understand cognitive and brain-training interventions. We aim to understand how our brains change naturally over time as well as what we can do about it.

Ongoing research shows what actually happens to the brain when it is engaged in new learning, offering a window into how people can sustain their brain health and how brain-training games can play a role. We believe these studies offer some strategies to train your brain the right way.

Brain training fact vs. fiction

Brain training is a set of tasks, often computerized, based on well-known tests to measure a type of cognition, but in a gamified manner.

Most brain-training games were designed to help participants master one or more specific skills. One example is a game that shows you a letter and number combination, where sometimes you must quickly identify whether the letter is even or odd, while other times you must switch to deciding whether the letter is a consonant or vowel. The game may increase in difficulty by requiring you to accomplish the task within a set time limit.

Such games are designed to require a high level of attention, fast processing speed and a flexible mind to alternate between the rules, known as executive functioning.

But it turns out that the specific skills learned in these games often do not translate to more general, real-world applications. Whether brain games meet their end goal of lasting cognitive improvement across a number of areas is still highly debated among psychologists. To make such claims requires rigorous evidence that playing a specific game improves cognitive or brain performance…

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What The Election Result Means For Home-Based Care Providers

Home Health Care News / By Andrew Donlan
 
Donald Trump will take over the presidency again in January. There will be many implications for home-based care providers, and details from Trump’s first presidency will help project those.

In the weeks leading up to the Nov. 5 election, Trump and Kamala Harris battled over home-based care. Specifically, Harris suggested a personal home care benefit under Medicare, while Trump’s campaign focused on economic points that it claimed would make home care more affordable, expanded benefits under Medicare Advantage (MA) and better telehealth access. 

But Medicare Advantage (MA) and telehealth are far from the most important changes that home-based care providers could see under the next Trump administration. 

A lesser focus on antitrust initiatives should be expected, clearing the way for larger deals like UnitedHealth Group’s (NYSE: UNH) takeover of Amedisys Inc. (Nasdaq: AMED). Home health reimbursement may even be affected, as well as home care reimbursement under Medicaid. 

In the months leading up to it, home-based care providers often described this election as “pivotal.” Some will like the changes that take place over the next four years, and others won’t. But all of those projected changes are worth taking a look at. 

“A lot can happen based on what happens in this election, in terms of the future of not only home- and community-based services, but also Medicare and anything health care oriented,” Dave Totaro, the chief government affairs officer at Bayada Home Health Care, told me on stage at the FUTURE conference earlier this year. 

In this week’s exclusive, members-only HHCN+ Update, I forecast what Trump’s win may mean for home health and home care providers across the country…

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