After the Hospital: Ensuring Access to Quality Post-Acute Care
House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health
2025-03-11
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Source: Congress.gov
Participants
Transcript
The subcommittee will come to order. Good afternoon. Thank you to our witnesses for being here today to discuss a crucial issue before us, ensuring access to quality post-acute care for seniors in terms of Medicare. Millions of Americans rely on post-acute care to recover from serious illnesses, surgeries, and injuries. In fact, 40% of Medicare beneficiaries who are hospitalized use acute care services following their hospital stay. Quality post-acute care can often result in patients' better outcomes and a better life. For example, patients discharged to a nursing home have a lower rate of death and a lower rate of hospital readmissions than those receiving care in a less specialized setting. Fifty-eight percent of home health patients report improvements in their ability to engage in daily life activities, long-term care hospitals offer specialized services, and in patients, rehab facilities can help patients recover from injuries. Some of these providers are even leveraging innovation like telehealth, which is very big, to allow post-acure care patients to receive quality health care at home. Just two weeks ago, Congresswoman Carol Miller introduced the bipartisan Hospice Recertification Flexibility Act. This important legislation will allow hospice providers to use telehealth to recertify their hospice stay from the comfort of their home, and I look forward to seeing this flexibility become a reality. We must focus on ensuring that patients receive the right care the right place at the right time, the right price. Our Medicare program has changed over the past decade and we are here to make sure that patients have sufficient access to care.
At the same time, we must conduct oversight to make sure these services are delivered timely. I commend Representative Panetta and Van Dyne for working together to ensure these programs operate as intended to conduct oversight in terms of hospice providers. Strengthening our post-acute care system is critical to improving outcomes and reducing health care costs. I look forward to the hearing today to discuss the importance of the issue, and I'm glad to recognize the gentleman, a good friend from Texas, Mr. Doggett, for his opening statement.
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