Improving patient outcomes is a critical challenge for healthcare. Once bundled payment and shared savings systems become law, it will become the critical challenge. In home healthcare, much can be learned from the experience of Canadian providers, already under an outcome-based system. One 100-year old home care provider has found that improvement efforts can begin at the point of care if the right processes and technologies support care provider collaboration.

Philips Respironics estimates that at least 2/3 of people living with Obstructive Sleep Apnea are not diagnosed with, and therefore not treated for, this dangerous disorder that can increase the risk of other serious chronic conditions, such as diabetes and heart disease. In honor of World Sleep Day, Philips has launched a web site where people can do a self-guided OSA risk assessment.

Psychologist, gerontologist, documentary filmmaker, entrepreneur, and best-selling author Ken Dychtwald's list of published books makes up a library of must-haves for anyone...no, everyone...working in healthcare with the elderly. We'll give that list of titles inside our story about him being awarded the top prize by the American Society on Aging. And, oh yes, there is a technology angle.

Staff writer Audrey Kinsella interviews Dr. Joseph Kvedar, MD, to learn how his staff and researchers at Center for Connected Health, housed within Partners Healthcare in Boston, have achieved such a high level of patient self-management among people with chronic conditions.

Clinicians and patients are uniting to drive use of in-home self-test technology for patients on long-term Warfarin therapy.

A University of Virginia study reveals that when hospice patients wish to die at home their chances of doing so decrease with their income, even when they are receiving in-home hospice services. 

Does this problem sound familiar? You want to automate at the point-of-care but you do not know what to do with outside contract therapists. You cannot justify giving them a laptop if they only do a handful of visits for you every week. They may work for several home care agencies and do not want to learn a half dozen software applications. But you need to keep them in the loop, coordinating with your case managers. We have found a new software product that just may be the solution you have been searching for.

Caring for a person with dementia? Experts say the key is changing caregiver behavior, not patient behavior. Technologies utilizing GPS, accelerometers, medication monitors, and wearable fall detection devices can make life better for both.

Rather than wait for someone else to take the initiative, Strategic Healthcare Programs CEO Barbara Rosenblum has decided to commit company resources to developing a fall risk assessment tool. The company will create a position and hire a project manager to lead the project. Information about applying for the position can be found at the end of this story.

According to guest author Scott Herrmann of Procura, mobile applications at the point of care can be like telephony systems on steroids. In this second in a series, he outlines clinical and financial advantages of equipping field staff with mobile applications running on wireless, cellular devices.

For nearly a year, we have been following the trends regarding Accountable Care Organizations, networks of post-acute care providers, and the various ways home care can help hospitals reduce their rate of avoidable readmissions. Our position has long been that home care should play a central role in the effort. Key to effectiveness is the skilled case manager, who will follow each patient from one locale to the next, advocating for the best and lowest cost care location at each transition. Apparently, we are not alone in our opinion. The Commission for Case Manager Certification shares our view and is actively preparing for a changing healthcare landscape.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 introduces Palliative Care as a service that lies between hospitalization, home health care and hospice. Staff writer Audrey Kinsella suggests that home care should see the opportunity and move quickly to fill in a space that is still largely empty.

"Too complex, too many other requirements at the same time" contends national physician's group.

Guest writer Nick Dobrzelecki offers Daymarck's 10-step plan to prepare your home health care agency or hospice for next year's conversion from ICD-9 to ICD-10.

The question on everyone's mind is, "How to do we lower healthcare costs while still providing optimal care to our patients?" See how guest writer Beth Kennedy, a home care nurse from northern Virginia, would answer.

Beginning next month, home care and hospice professionals will be able to take certification exams at 200 certified testing centers instead of having to travel to California.

Seventy-six percent of home care providers have not begun to plan for ICD-10 conversion, scheduled for October 2013. This is but one of multiple disturbing findings from a survey conducted last month by coding services provider Daymarck.

Case Western Reserve University Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing is conducting a research project to determine the barriers to annual influenza vaccination by home healthcare professionals. They need your help. Please read this two-paragraph article and then click on the enclosed link to participate in their survey.

What do you do when you find yourself with twenty-five laptop computers gathering dust on a shelf, placed there by twenty-five clinicians who rejected them and insisted on returning to paper? Two things, according to Debra Harris, RN, Director of Wilson County (NC) Home Care. Find out here what software system helped Wilson County increased average visits per day, reduce data entry errors by 50%, slash printing and copying costs and provide field staff with updated patient status every few hours.

Adding reminders to home telehealth systems already in place may mean the difference between comfort and misery, even life and death, for elderly persons living alone during a heat wave like the one most of the country experienced this summer.

Read story to learn how to enter contest.

There are thousands of stories about compassionate caregivers in the home care and hospice world. Yours might win you a trip to Las Vegas for the upcoming NAHC Annual Meeting. HEALTHCAREfirst, the software vendor that has been growing through both sales and acquisitions recently, opens its wallet this time to honor the most compassionate among us. We spoke with HEALTHCAREfirst CEO Bobby Robertson about why he decided to do this. We also have the details about how to nominate the most compassionate caregiver you know.

In a new report released this week by the "SmartPersonalHealth" project and developed by Continua Health Alliance, the European Telecommunication Standards Institute, Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise, Empirica, and The Edelman Centre, healthcare providers are encouraged to demand that their vendors create devices and applications that work easily and seamlessly with other eHealth applications. The report asserts that the lack of interoperability among products, devices and services from various vendors is limiting the number of viable healthcare solutions available on the market.

In response to what they consider disturbing mandates issued by Medicaid officials in two states and parts of two others, a collection of home care and hospice industry telephony vendors, providers, technology vendors and state associations has formed a new organization, "The Electronic Visit Verification Standards Workgroup." The organization’s members believe rules established by Medicaid officials in South Carolina, Tennessee, Florida and Texas infringe on free market trade and will have far-reaching, detrimental consequences should other states follow suit.

Every 71 seconds, another senior is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. By age 85, half the population is afflicted. As a result, dementia caused by Alzheimer’s disease represents the single most severe threat to quality of life for the elderly. Staving off or slowing down the development of dementia should therefore be a goal pursued by everyone who anticipates living that long.

Engaging in a dedicated brain fitness program has been shown to help seniors work toward such a goal. Decades of medical research, summarized here, confirm that consistent, long-term participation in cognitive stimulation is associated with a greater than 60% reduced risk of dementia.

Last week, we cited research indicating patients truly are presenting for admission to home health care services after shorter hospital stays and in far worse health. We argued that Medicare-certified agency competitiveness is better supported by preventing return hospital admissions than by shaving a day off hospital lengths of stay. This week, let's take a closer look at Computer-Assisted Clinical Documentation Systems. Over the years, certain myths have grown up around point-of-care automation. The best way to attack mythology is with facts. Here are five truths.