COLUMN: Home health essential to clients, state

Since 1966 the Ross County Health District’s home health division, Ross County Home Health, has provided much needed in-home care to our residents.

Home healthcare helps thousands of people in Chillicothe and Ross County, allowing them to remain in the comfort of their own homes and to receive the healthcare services they need, without being in a much more expensive hospital or nursing home.

Some time ago Ohio’s governor “rebalanced” the state’s Medicaid long-term care spending, in an effort to guide clients toward less expensive home-based services. The goal is for Medicaid recipients to receive the care they need at home, where it costs Medicaid (and taxpayers) less than if they received those same services in a hospital or if they were forced into a nursing home.

In most ways it is a good plan and it appears to be working: The state is reporting several hundred million dollars in savings, and Ohio’s Rainy Day Fund has a surplus of $2 billion.

However, part of the governor’s plan included a Medicaid rate-setting methodology that has put home health agencies at-risk. Two examples are: The plan set a base rate that can be billed for home health aide salaries at just $8.41 an hour; and a rate cut in July of 2015 that lead to a 27 percent decrease in the reimbursement rate that could be charged for LPN services.

Ross County Home Health strives to attract a good, competent, caring workforce, and to pay its staff an adequate living wage. Also, we want to include for our staff traditional and common benefits that all workers deserve, such as health insurance and mileage reimbursement.

The state’s low reimbursement rate is making it increasingly difficult to do.

We implore Ohio’s leadership to see the importance of in-home care and the cost savings it allows the state’s Medicaid program to enjoy. If home health agencies are unable to employ a competent workforce due to low pay and poor benefit packages, it will severely limit the number of clients we can serve. Likewise, if home care agencies cannot serve enough clients, their survival as a business is not guaranteed.

Those factors could lead to a home care provider shortage, and will push residents who need home health services back into more expensive hospital and long term care settings. This will create a situation that is the exact opposite of what the state intended.

We hope Ohio’s governor and our lawmakers will review the situation and realize that short term savings are not a long term answer to this situation.

Wanda Whetsel is director of Ross County Home Health with the Ross County Health District.