The Home Health Conundrum

Here's what I've learned about home health care companies. Medicare hires companies that assume some liabilities while a patient is in their care. The process requires supervisors that do evaluations to grade the patient upon entry and re-evaluate to continue care. Therapists just do their job for an hour or less and the progress that's made is graded by the supervisor. Each month evaluations are done to see patient progress. Each evaluation is also counted as a visit or therapy for billing purposes. Here is how it goes.

For each type of therapy, Speech, Occupational or Physical...they each have a supervisor. So your first visit for each is wasted as it's only an evaluation. Nursing is included too and it's done in the same manner. If you have all four types, eight of your visits for 30 days are totally wasted on evaluations. If they only recommend 14 visits, you get a total of 6, one hour therapy visits. How will 6 hours of therapy per month help? It doesn't...it's a scam!

It's a whole bunch of bullshit for very little benefit, but the companies get paid. It's a waste of time and money and we should be able to hire therapists directly without all the crap that comes along with it.

Home health companies are money makers because patients can't get enough care to improve. They're all basically the same locally because the therapists are contractors. None are organized and they can't communicate with each other or keep schedules. It's a mess and I'm disgusted with them all.