“The Hidden Costs Home Health Providers Face When Taking On More MA Patients,” by Patrick Filbin, HomeHealthCareNews “As Medicare Advantage (MA) penetration continues, home health agencies are coming to grips with the additional — and sometimes hidden — costs that are associated with transitioning to a payer mix more dominated by MA. Whether those costs come from operational changes or otherwise, the financial impact of MA’s market penetration can’t be ignored.” LTC Comment, Stephen A. Moses, President, Center for Long-Term Care Reform: Adapting to Medicare Advantage payers may be as challenging and problematical for home care providers as it is
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“Genworth Creates Discounted LTC Provider Network,” by Allison Bell, ThinkAdvisor “Genworth hopes to provide discounts of more than 10% on home care services. Company negotiators can give providers access to 1.1 million with LTCI coverage. The insurer reported positive net income, in spite of the effects of new accounting rules. … The new CareScout program will offer employer-sponsored benefit plans, other long-term care insurance providers and Genworth’s own LTCI policyholders access to care providers who have signed a provider network agreement.” LTC Comment, Stephen A. Moses, President, Center for Long-Term Care Reform: Developments in keeping with LTCI’s new spirit of
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“‘Big Trouble’: Medicare Advantage Rates Strain SNF Margins, Deepen Sector’s Pain,” by Amy Stulick, Skilled Nursing News   “As Medicare Advantage continues to penetrate the nursing home market, leaders say that MA plans are depressing margins amid higher costs to run operations. This might lead some operators to contemplate closing, while others will be wiser to hire staff in designated roles to help them negotiate better rates – and exclusions – for managed care contracts. … Traditional Medicare amounts to nearly $600 per resident day in revenue, while managed Medicare is paying out only $468 per day, NIC data shows.”
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“Regular internet use may be linked to lower dementia risk in older adults, study says,” by Jen Christensen, CNNHealth   “A study published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society suggested that older people who regularly used the internet were less likely to develop dementia. … People who used the internet at the start of the study had about half the risk of dementia as people who were not regular users.” LTC Comment, Stephen A. Moses, President, Center for Long-Term Care Reform: I like the sound of that as I’m online all day. Even if the causality is the other way
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 “A Clever Strategy to Get Your Long-Term Care Costs Covered by Medicaid,” by Eric Reed, Yahoo!Finance   “A qualified income trust (or QIT) is a special form of trust designed to help people receive long-term care benefits under Medicaid. It is intended for people who make too much money to receive long-term or residential-care benefits under the program, yet too little money to pay for this kind of care on their own. Through a QIT patients can carve out a portion of their income each month into a dedicated account. They lose direct access to this money, but it also does not
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“ChatGPT’s blind spots can compromise caregiving, authors warn,” by John O’Connor, McKnight’s Senior Living “Writing in the journal Health Affairs, Authors Wura Jacobs and Omolola E. Adepoju note that ChatGPT’s responses can indeed improve care and reduce mortality. But many of the texts, books, articles and websites that chatbots parrot can contain inappropriate and potentially harmful information. That’s especially true for inquiries that involve areas such as the age, race/ethnicity, sex and educational levels of residents.” LTC Comment, Stephen A. Moses, President, Center for Long-Term Care Reform: In tomorrow’s LTC Bullet, we’ll ask an artificial intelligence chatbot questions about long-term care
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