Health and Human Services
While reading this committee’s monthly report, I wondered when our CHHA, which is an acronym for Certified Home Health Care Agency, became titled as the Health Care Agency on the report. When I worked at the CHHA, we were really proud of that certification. It means that the agency is qualified to accept patients with Medicaid and Medicare insurance. Other home care agencies, which are only licensed, not certified, aren’t allowed to provide services to these patients, so the certification means a guaranteed flow of revenue and a higher status among home health providers. These certifications used to be granted to very few agencies per county, but they still require a Certificate of Need application process and have to meet higher standards. I checked to see that our CHHA was still listed online as a Certified agency and it is, and I was happy to see that the CHHA still scores 4 stars on the Medicare patient surveys, which means that the patients gave it very good reviews. The quality rating is also better than it has been at 2.5 stars. I have noticed that much less data and other information about the CHHA is included in the monthly report, and what there is seems focused on productivity, so I’m concerned. Of course, as a taxpayer I like to know that our employees are working effectively, but I want to see some other benchmarks of the CHHA which used to be included in the report, such as how timely start of care is, star ratings and the results of surveys, not that it was “good.” The CHHA is a valuable resource in our county as other home care agencies don’t cover our entire territory or service the entire range of our population, and home care saves our county residents from having to enter a nursing home as well as improving county health outcomes in general. We should be proud of our CHHA and use its correct title in official reports.