Byline: Rachel Brand
ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS
Home health agencies in Colorado on average performed about on par with the national average in a new government database that allows consumers to gauge the quality of their care.
The database gave a report card to agencies that provide short-term medical help to senior citizens and the disabled. It measures their success in helping seniors cope with essential daily activities - such as bathing and dressing - as well as the rates of rehospitalization or emergency hospital visits.
It went online Monday on the government's Medicare Web site, www.Medicare.gov, or through the government's toll-free telephone help line at 1-800-Medicare.
``We see it as a tool for clients to use to compare agencies,'' said Ellen Caruso, executive director of the Home Care Association of Colorado. It's also a tool for agency improvement, she said.
``It's a great start,'' said Erin Denholm, senior vice president for home care agency Centura Health at Home. ``What we need to do in partnership with Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is to continue to develop those indicators to improve their relevancy.''
Patients of 139 Medicare-certified home health agencies in Colorado didn't improve as much in six areas of daily living, including getting out of bed, moving around and experiencing less pain, compared with the national average.
Those same patients improved more in five areas, such as getting to the bathroom and getting dressed.
The average scores for Colorado's home health agencies were within 5 percentage points above or below the national average on all measures.
The information was collected from questionnaires administered to Medicare patients on their first home-care visit and every 60 days thereafter. Those questionnaires are then collated in a national database.
Denholm thinks the database is a commendable start, but slightly off the point. Many of the metrics included in the database don't measure what home care is intended to serve.
``We don't go in to help somebody improve with their bathing or to help dress themselves,'' she said.
Instead, home care is intended to stabilize either the patient's chronic disease or improve their medical condition. Neither of those goals is necessarily connected to improving daily living functions, she said.
INFOBOX
Home-care help
* A new government database helps Medicare patients assess the quality of home care agencies. To find out more, go to Medicare's Web site, www.Medicare.gov, or through the telephone toll-free help line at 1-800-Medicare.
