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Ambulatory Care
Survey: Non-Medicare home care a financial winner for hospitals
A substantial majority of hospitals make money or at least break even on their non-Medicare home care services, except for hospices, a new survey shows.
In recent years, hospitals have aggressively expanded their home care product lines to include such services as home infusion (IV) therapy, home medical equipment (HME), storefront retail home care centers, and private-duty care. Some of these services have been designed as stand-along niche businesses. Others have been added to augment existing Medicare-certified home health services, which are cost-reimbursed and generally break even, at best.
The survey of 805 hospitals, sponsored by the American Hospital Association's Society for Ambulatory Care Professionals, finds that retail home care centers had the best profitability performance in their most recent fiscal year. About 60 percent of hospitals with this service report that it was profitable, while 21 percent broke even and 19 percent lost money.
HME was the second most profitable service, with 55 percent of hospitals reporting they made money in this category. Another 28 percent of hospitals say they broke even in providing HME, while 17 percent lost money (see figure 1, p. 31).
Eighty-three percent of hospitals surveyed say...