NAHC Celebrates its Birthday and the
Beginning of its 27^th Year

Washington , DC – The National Association for Home Care & Hospice (NAHC) today celebrates its birthday and the beginning of its 27th year. NAHC was formed on March 10, 1982, by the merger of two smaller entities, the National Association for Home Health Agencies and the Council of Home Health Agencies, both with a combined total of 200 members. Today, NAHC membership has grown to more than 6,000 members. March 10 was selected for the merger because it marked the birthday of Lillian Wald, Founder of the Henry Street Settlement in New York City, which became the Visiting Nurse Service of New York City, the prototype for all modern home health organizations. (See related press release.)

“NAHC has played a very important role in helping to unify and professionalize the home care and hospice community,” said NAHC President Val J. Halamandaris. “While these achievements have been great, they are only a harbinger of all that will be achieved by NAHC for the benefit of the American public.”

The many accomplishments of NAHC include the following:

• State homecare and hospice affiliates of NAHC have been created in all 50 states.

• America ’s public awareness of home care increased from 20 percent to more than 80 percent.

• America ’s public support for the expansion of care in the home over comparable institutional options increased from 40 percent to 90 percent.

• The Medicare hospice benefit was created by Congress.

• Total industry revenues, which include Medicare, Medicaid, private insurance, VA programs, special telehealth programs, fee-for-service, hospice and home medical equipment increased from an estimated $3 billion in 1982 to some $260 billion today.

• Total patients served increased from an estimated 1.3 million in 1982 to more than 8 million today.

• The total workforce of the home care and hospice industry increased from an estimated 100,000 nurses, aides, therapists, social workers, managers, suppliers and vendors to more than 2 million today.

• NAHC’s total employees increased from two in 1982 to 60 today. Total revenues grew from $350,000 in 1982 to $12 million today.

• NAHC’s total assets increased from some $50,000 in 1982 to approximately $17 million today.

• NAHC established the Center for Health Care Law, a public interest law firm which has won numerous lawsuits protecting the rights of patients and providers to public and private health care programs. Among the suits it has been a part of was Olmstead v. L.C., in which the U.S. Supreme Court in 1999 articulated a constitutional right for all Americans to be cared for in the least restrictive environment--in effect guaranteeing to all Americans a right to be cared for in their own homes wherever possible.

• NAHC has worked with the National Governors Association which in 2004 named long term care as the greatest challenge facing America in the future and home care as the best solution to the problem.

• NAHC created one affiliate in l982, the Foundation for Hospice and Home Care, and has added 15 additional affiliated organizations since then, including the Home Care Technology Association of America, the Private Duty Home Care Association of America, the Hospice Association of America, the Home Healthcare Nurses Association, the Home Care & Hospice Financial Managers Association, and the World Home Care and Hospice Organization.

• NAHC was the first provider organization admitted to the Leadership Council of Aging Organizations, which is a consortium of consumer groups such as AARP, the Alliance for Aging Research and the National Council on Aging. LCAO has helped advance many of the legislative positions which are important to chronically ill disabled and older Americans.

• NAHC created a weekly printed newsletter in l982 called NAHC Report which has evolved to a daily electronic newsletter. A highly regarded four-color monthly magazine called Caring, which was distributed to people beginning in October 1982, today is received by more than 35,000 organizations, including all of the nation's home care and hospice organizations,  U.S. hospitals, public and college libraries and other subscribers.

• NAHC has become what it was intended to be: the unified voice for home care and hospice in the U.S. At the time of its creation, NAHC had seven competing organizations. It was impossible to get these organizations to see that they had much more in common than the few things that divided them.  As a consequence of their division and limited size, they enjoyed little success in Congress. Since then, three of these organizations merged into NAHC, two went out of business, and now there is cooperation between NAHC and the remaining two entities. This, plus the creation of the grassroots Legislative Action Network marshalling the support of its members and its state affiliates, and support within the Leadership Council of Aging Organizations, has allowed NAHC to be inordinantly successful in representing the interests of the home care and hospice industry.

• Inspired by Mother Teresa in 1985, NAHC helped create a non-profit organization, the Caring Institute, which promotes the values of caring, integrity and public service by identifying role models who are inducted into the Hall of Fame for Caring Americans, a museum was established three blocks east of the U.S. Capitol.  NAHC helped to recruit volunteers who restored this period house on Capitol Hill which was the first Washington, DC, home of the great abolitionist, Frederick Douglass.

NAHC’s work is far from finished.  For 2008, the NAHC Board of Directors has approved an aggressive legislative agenda that seeks to protect homebound Medicare patients through preservation of home health agencies’ annual inflation update or “market basket” increase and to reinstate the “add on” that has helped rural agencies to deal with higher costs of delivering care.  A related goal of the organization is to rescind regulatory cuts to home health imposed for 2008 and additional cuts planned for 2009 through 2011. By way of further clarification of the first two lines of this paragraph, President George Bush in his 2009 Budget message, proposed close to $200 billion in Medicare cuts over the next five years including a freeze in the automatic payment increases which all providers (including home health) receive each year to help them keep pace with inflation. The cuts for home health would have been draconian totaling $11 billion over the five year period, virtually eviscerating the Medicare home health benefit which last year spent $13 billion for physician-ordered skilled nursing care or physical therapy to some 3.l million homebound Americans. 

NAHC President Halamandaris said that "The Administration's proposal is shortsighted. It flies in the face of the universal right to home care articulated by the U.S. Supreme Court in Olmstead.  It would revert the nation to failed policies which shatter the family in times of crisis by favoring institutional care over more humane and cost effective care delivered at home.”

NAHC intends to fight with equal passion to protect patients who qualify for Medicare hospice services, and to reject the nearly $8 billion in cuts to hospice included in the President’s fiscal year 2009 budget.

There are other legislative imperatives that NAHC will work rigorously to enact – including policies to encourage use of technologies as a means to make care in the home more broadly available and to ease the growing staffing crisis.  NAHC intends to work diligently to remove barriers to home care and hospice providers playing an important role in disaster preparedness and response, including pandemic illness. Addressing the serious deficiencies of the Medicare Advantage program that have resulted in many patients being denied access to the home health benefit their peers receive under traditional Medicare is also high on NAHC’s priority list.  Fourth, NAHC intends to fight aggressively to amend Medicare and Medicaid so they allow home care agencies to provide preventive health care and chronic disease management services instead of limiting them to respond when patients have suffered an acute episode which put them in a hospital. Finally, NAHC will continue to do its part to see that the nation’s elderly and disabled have access to a comprehensive, coordinated long term care program that has home and community-based care as its foundation.

“All of us have been members of many organizations, and NAHC is simply the best there is,” said Elaine Stephens, CEO of the Visiting Nurse Service of Greater Rhode Island and Chairman of the Board of NAHC. “NAHC aspires to excellence in every respect, its staff has been repeatedly honored as the best in Washington, the organization lives by the highest values and has demonstrated a passionate interest in the well being of both patients and providers.”

The National Association for Home Care & Hospice represents the interests of more than 25,000 home care agencies, home care aide organizations, hospices and U.S. hospitals that provide home care as well as the two million nurses, aides, therapists, managers and IT personnel who provide care to more than eight million Americans every year. A partial list of the services home care organizations provide to keep seniors and disabled persons independent in their own homes include skilled nursing care, physical therapy, speech therapy, occupational therapy, physician services, home care aide services, personal care, meal preparation, supervision of medication, telehealth services, home modifications; i.e., to adapt a home to accommodate the use of a wheelchair, shopping, transportation and financial services. Home care helps patients and their families regain their equilibrium after hospitalization or an acute health episode, it helps them with their rehabilitation, it assists them to adapt their home environment and change their lifestyle so as to prevent additional hospitalizations and health crises, it helps them to manage their chronic diseases and to keep these from manifesting as disabilities; if and when they do become intractable, home care teaches patients to manage their disabilities. When the end of life is near, hospice, a specialized form of home care, helps clients to live fully until the end of their days, to manage their pain and finish their unfinished business as well as help their families to cope with the loss of a loved one. For more information, visit NAHC's Web site at www.nahc.org.