This week, HCAF moved to create the Home Care Public Awareness Task Force in order to gather stories from patients and providers in which policies negatively affected a patients ability to receive home health services. We plan to use these stories of real Floridians to show the lawmakers and the public the negative effects of bad legislation and why it is so important that they do everything they can to support the home health industry.
The Home Care Public Awareness Task Force will be an important tool for HCAF to use in our advocacy efforts to improve the condition for both patients and agencies in Florida.
Please see below for the detailed goals of this task force:
Purpose: Identify and collect Medicaid client stories from Florida that bring to life the effect legislative and policy decision on patients/clients.
Rationale: The industry needs to more effectively communicate our value proposition and the need for policies and rates that are supportive of home health care in Florida. Policy‐makers and legislators do not believe that cutting rates, services, or hours result in negative patient outcomes. By compiling stories that highlight the link between ill-conceived decisions and negative patient outcomes we will open a fruitful discussion.
Project objectives:
· Identify, collect, and publish Medicaid patient stories to demonstrate the negative impact of legislative and regulatory decisions (phase one)
· Analyze and align stories to link back to changes in policy and/or legislation (phase one)
· Compile materials that can be used to build awareness among legislators and regulators that decision on rates, authorized hours, and program access impacts client care (phase two ‐ material development)
Topic focus: We are looking for stories of individuals who experienced a sentinel or catastrophic event (worsening condition, fall, hospitalization, institutionalization, even death, etc.) that can be linked back to a policy change or legislative decision in rates, authorized hours/services, or program criteria.
Client types: We will focus on Medicaid stories from clients in fee-for-service, managed care of waiver programs.
Why focus on the negative? Legislators and regulators don’t think that anything negative happens to clients when they cut hours, cut rates, or change program requirements. This project seeks to highlight real consequences of decisions.
How will the stories be used? The committee will use select stories to communicate directly with legislators and regulators (face to face) to convey that there are consequences of legislative and regulatory changes. Client and provider information will be removed.
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