Copays for Home Care Billing by 2017?
Read an article from NAHC which said that the President's Budget plan proposes that Home Care Billing include a co-pay by 2017. Now that is really easy to say but what do Home Care Providers plan on doing about it? I don't mean the protest thing, which we all should support, but rather how would we implement this? Now most of us are used to paying co-pays at a doctors office and most cases we use a credit/debit card to pay this amount. So let's think about this from 2 seperate angles.
1) The effect on the Home Care Provider: Home Care Software will need to facilitate the capture of that payment. Do we use cellular based credit card scanners synced with software? Perhaps...
2) The effect on patients: Most of us pay $10, $20, $30, etc for a doctors visit... but most of us who are well enough to stay home, don't see a doctor every day. But in Home Care we sometimes do provide daily service if not multiple visits on a single day. So the looming question is how much is this copay going to be and how quickly does the amount become too much for the patient to bear.
The thing is that Home Care is by far the most cost effective health care option in the market place and we have to wonder whether or not co-pays will push patients away from Home Care, which may ultimately lead to more hospitalizations and greater cost...