Cleveland Clinic Journal of Medicine Focuses on Home Health

Last month, the Cleveland Clinic Journal of Medicine (CCJM) partnered with the Alliance for Home Health Quality and Innovation to release a supplement to the CCJM, which examined the critical role home health has in the nation’s healthcare delivery system. Leading medical experts and home health professionals presented outcomes from innovative approaches to home health and offered a variety of perspectives on topics such as:

• Transitional care
• Chronic disease management
• Palliative care
• Health care technology

At a Capitol Hill briefing, supplement authors discussed how home healthcare could be better utilized across healthcare systems to streamline care, improve patient outcomes and reduce healthcare costs. Key take-aways from the presentation include:

• Better management of the care transition process – such as moving the patient from the hospital to home health – can result in measureable outcomes including a decrease in the average readmission rate.
• Because Americans are living longer and want to remain in their homes, it is especially important that we find better ways to coordinate care at the time of discharge so that chronically ill older Americans can be cared for in a more clinically and cost-effective way.
• There is great evidence that supports the value of home health in providing supportive and recuperative care services in our nation’s health care system.
• As the prevalence of seniors requiring care for chronic and advanced illnesses grows, more integrated systems and increased coordination will be critical to ensuring quality of life for the Medicare population.

In addition to serving as a resource to policy makers and thought leaders, the supplement is a peer-reviewed monthly medical journal and continuing-education product, which offers practical and clinical information relevant to a variety of healthcare fields.

To access the full supplement, Optimizing Home Health Care: Enhanced Value, Improved Outcomes, visit here.