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Planning for Home Health Care: The Medicare Benefit Explained

No matter how old you are, you’re still a rookie. Think about it. Even if you are 85 years of age, you are 85 years old for the first time. “Old age”, therefore, does not lessen the shock, surprise, or dismay we feel when suddenly we can no longer care for ourselves. In fact, the longer we live the harder this adjustment becomes. After all, living vigorously, independently, and positively enables long life. As difficult as it may be to

Planning for Alzheimer’s Care

Alzheimer’s disease is a chronic, progressive illness. As with other chronically ill people, those with Alzheimer’s disease need chronic care. Chronic care differs from the acute care we receive in hospitals and doctors’ offices − it is delivered over time and fluctuates from day to day. Chronic care is health care in the form of daily personal-care assistance, supervision, medication administration, meal preparation, companionship, shopping, cleaning, laundry, and so on. America’s chronic-care system is a patchwork of services that varies

Health Care’s Blue Ocean

“Imagination is more powerful than knowledge.” – Albert Einstein Blue Ocean Strategy describes a planning model for envisioning and forming successful new businesses. Through such constructs as “uncontested market space,” “value innovation,” and “the strategy canvas,” the book takes us on an expedition beyond the red ocean of market-share competition into the blue ocean of novel, imaginative enterprise. From Southwest Airlines to Cirque De Soleil to the Model T, the authors demonstrate how blue ocean businesses achieve dramatic leaps in

The Long Term Home Care Continuum

In 1999, I attended the “State of the Industry Conference” in Washington, DC, sponsored by Home Health Line. In his address to nearly 900 home health professionals, the keynote speaker, Senator Charles Grassley, made the following unsolicited statement: “I truly believe the home health benefit will remain a part of Medicare.” What struck me about this comment was that at that time, no one in the room was wondering about home health’s continuance as a part of the Medicare benefit