VNAA forms first national association for home healthcare

The Visiting Nurse Associations of America (VNAA) has launched the nation’s first trade association for home healthcare advocacy.

The 501 (c) 6 organization, ElevatingHOME, will represent more than 12,000 home-based health and 4,000 hospice providers across the country. Tracey Moorhead, President and CEO of VNAA, has been appointed President and CEO of ElevatingHOME. Joseph Scopelliti, President and CEO, VNA Health System of Shamokin, Pennsylvania, has been named Chairman of the Board. The Council of State Home Care Associations will also join as a founding member.

Among the organization’s goals are:

• Demonstrating the role of home-based care in meeting patients’ healthcare needs at home
• Developing and disseminating best practices for home-based care
• Establishing a high standard of operational integrity
• Elevating the level of public, private, foundation, academic and legislative support for the patients and families served
• Advancing financial models to support a robust home-based care industry while delivering value along the broader health care continuum

“Most patients—seniors, but others too—prefer to receive medical care at home when possible, but the current health care delivery system design is organized around costly and sometimes unnecessary hospital stays,” said Board Chair Scopelliti. “When people can receive the care they need in their own homes, amidst familiar surroundings with family and friends nearby, they often have better health outcomes at lower costs.”

Home-based care can play three crucial roles in a redesigned health care delivery system: 1) partnering with primary care, 2) providing post-acute and acute care at home, and 3) partnering with home and community-based long-term care providers, the organization’s leaders stress. “Home-based care is carefully designed to provide care that people of all ages need—from wellness visits and chronic disease management to palliative, advanced illness and hospice care—and it is generally provided at lower costs than similar care provided in a medical institution,” said ElevatingHOME’s President and CEO Moorhead. “Not only can home-based care services substitute for higher-cost hospital care, they can also ensure that patients who have been hospitalized do not wind up back in the hospital soon after being discharged.”

The organizational launch took place at this week’s 2017 Home-Based Care: National Leadership Conference in San Diego.

Other founding members include J. Mark Baiada, Founder and President, BAYADA Home Health Care, Susan Brouillette, MBA, MPH, CEO, Alacare Home Health and Hospice, Erin Denholm, RN, MSN, RWJENF, President and CEO, Trinity Health at Home, Norene Mostkoff, MBA, President and CEO, Visiting Nurse Health System, Marcia Reissig, RN, MS, CEO, Sutter Care at Home, and Bob Fazzi, EdD, Founder and Managing Partner, Fazzi Associates.

Pamela Tabar

Pamela Tabar was editor-in-chief of I Advance Senior Care from 2013-2018. She has worked as a writer and editor for healthcare business media since 1998, including as News Editor of Healthcare Informatics. She has a master’s degree in journalism from Kent State University and a master’s degree in English from the University of York, England.