Submitted by Dave Totaro, Chief Government Affairs Officer (GAO)

Last week, I was elected to the Board of the Partnership for Quality Home Health (PQHH) replacing Chairman and Founder, Mark Baiada, who stepped down upon his retirement.  PQHH is an alliance of major home health providers dedicated to the development of policy to improve the quality of life and care of all home health patients.  I am also a board member and Chairman of the Partnership for Medicaid Home-based Care (PMHC), an alliance of major Medicaid providers, managed care organizations, state and national home care associations and interested business affiliates dedicated to the development of policy to enhance Medicaid reform.

Also, following each Board meeting, the Partnerships held events to honor the support for Medicaid and Medicare shown by home health care champions U.S. Senator Bob Casey (D-PA) and U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX).

And, last week, the Government Affairs Office supported the PQHH Action Alert to urge the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to withdraw their Home Health Groupings Model (HHGM), a proposed new payment model for home health services that would significantly cut home health revenues by more than 15%.  As of September 14,  759 BAYADA colleagues have sent 2334 messages to 156 legislators.  Thank you to everyone who took action and who participated in this very important and necessary alert.