Bring the Vote Home Initiative Gears Up to Help Seniors, Home-Bound Patients Exercise Their Right to Vote in 2014 Election Cycle

WASHINGTON – National home health leaders are reinvigorating the Bring the Vote Home initiative, a program which aims to engage the nation’s 3.5 million Medicare home health beneficiaries and their caregiving teams in the electoral process by assisting patients in the voter and absentee ballot registration process. Home health patients are primarily senior and disabled Americans who are unable to travel to polling places due to their homebound status.

“Homebound home health patients face many obstacles in the voting process, which we hope to remove so they can take part in the 2014 election,” said Billy Tauzin, senior counsel to the Partnership for Quality Home Healthcare. “Bring the Vote Home offers patients, who may otherwise not have the ability to vote, a voice. Both patients and home health professionals can participate in Bring the Vote Home to prepare for the November elections and raise awareness about Medicare issues impacting the delivery of home health.”

The Partnership for Quality Home Healthcare and other home health leaders have developed a website, bringthevotehome.org, which offers state-specific information and instructions for voter and absentee ballot registration. By simply clicking on a state on an interactive map, Bring the Vote Home participants can access a voter registration how-to guide, voter registration application forms and absentee ballot application forms for the participant’s home states.

These resources are also provided directly to patients in the homes by their caregiving teams, which include physicians, nurses, clinicians, therapists and home health aides.

Bring the Vote Home is also launching a new informational video, which illustrates the value of home health in America, the impact of recent funding cuts to the Medicare home health benefit and instructions for how to use the Bring the Vote Home program tools.

Approximately 3.5 million Medicare beneficiaries receive clinically advanced, cost effective care services in the home setting. Data show that Medicare home health beneficiaries are older, sicker, poorer, and more likely to be members of ethnic or racial minority populations than all other Medicare beneficiaries. In addition to being homebound, Medicare home health patients have greater functional limitations and disabling conditions and have greater difficulty completing routine tasks than all other Medicare beneficiaries.

“We are proud to support this initiative as an added resource to our senior patients, who remain an important voting bloc for candidates,” added Tauzin. “No American should have his or her ability to vote jeopardized because of poor health and limited mobility – least of all vulnerable seniors. Bring the Vote Home seeks to simplify what can be a confusing and unclear process to ensure that seniors’ right to participate in the electoral process is protected.”