New Data Shows Decline in Hospital Readmissions for Home Health Patients

The Alliance for Home Health Quality and Innovation has worked with Avalere to release an updated Home Health Chartbook, providing a broad overview of home health patients, the home health workforce, organizational trends, and the economic contribution of home health agencies.

The updated analysis of America’s home health population and industry highlights a number of positive trends with regards to both quality and patient outcomes since the 2013 data was released.

The study revealed that in the past year patients got markedly better at walking or moving around and had less pain when doing so.  Patients also experienced improved breathing and were better able to both bathe and take drugs correctly.

In addition to elevated patient outcomes, home health teams met superior quality measures more frequently.  Indeed, a staggering 99% of providers met quality standards for checking patients for the risk of developing pressure bedsores.  Moreover, 98% achieved high standards for monitoring a patients’ risk of falling.

Across the board, Americans benefited from improvements to the delivery of high quality home health care.  Amazingly, home healthcare already allows millions of seniors to receive highly effective care in a patient’s preferred setting – their own home.  Now, it is only getting better.

We will continue to fight for Americans already reaping the benefits of home health, and ensure that there is only more good news to come.