OCS HomeCare and DecisionHealth Announce the 2010 HomeCare Elite Top 25 Percent of U. S. Home Health Agencies

OCS HomeCare and DecisionHealth Announce the 2010 HomeCare Elite Top 25 Percent of U. S. Home Health Agencies

The HomeCare Elite highlights the top 25 percent of home health care agencies and has become the industry standard for measuring organizational performance. The 2010 HomeCare Elite also recognizes the top 100 and top 500 providers nationwide. OCS HomeCare publishes a complete HomeCare Elite list that is available for download.

Seattle, WA (Vocus) October 5, 2010

OCS HomeCare and DecisionHealth® are pleased to announce the 2010 HomeCare Elite™, a compilation of the top performing home health agencies in the United States. Now in its fifth year, the market-leading 2010 HomeCare Elite list is currently available to download from the OCS HomeCare website.

The HomeCare Elite annual review identifies the top 25 percent of agencies nationwide and further highlights the top 100 and top 500 agencies overall. Winners are ranked by an analysis of measures in quality of care, quality improvement, and financial performance.

“For five years, the HomeCare Elite has established the industry standard for identifying home health care agencies that perform at the highest level,” says Amanda Twiss, CEO of OCS HomeCare. “We congratulate the 2010 HomeCare Elite for their continued success and commitment to high quality of care and strong financial performance.”

“The 2010 HomeCare Elite have been able to provide quality care to patients while achieving positive financial outcomes, which has not been easy during the recent recession,” says Corinne Kuypers-Denlinger, DecisionHealth vice president of home health. “The top 25 percent of agencies deserve this special recognition.”

Some interesting data points round out the fifth anniversary of the HomeCare Elite. There were 9,375 Medicare-certified home health agencies in the U. S. with sufficient data to be considered for the 2010 HomeCare Elite. This represents an increase of 483 from 8,892 home care agencies that were eligible last year. Of the 2,347 agencies that were identified as the top 25 percent for the 2010 HomeCare Elite list, 1,503 are repeat agencies from 2009. Further, 222 agencies in this year’s top 500 appeared in 2009. Plus, only 31 of this year’s top 100 returned from last year’s top 100.

It is worth noting that 452 home care agencies have appeared on the HomeCare Elite list all five years. In addition, 11 agencies have appeared in the top 500 all five years. And finally, only one home health agency in the entire country has been recognized as a top 100 agency for all five years—Parkview Homecare of Pueblo, Colorado.

“We are speechless and very excited,” says Kelea Nardini, director of Parkview Homecare. “This would not be possible without the commitment from senior management and our caregivers to providing quality care to our patients. We are constantly striving toward excellence in quality of care. We have been partners with OCS for five years, using the data to manage and improve our overall outcomes and quality. The data and information from OCS has really helped our overall success.”

OCS HomeCare uses publicly available data from Home Health Compare and the CMS Cost Reports to create the HomeCare Elite list of agencies. Three domains of performance were cumulatively evaluated—quality of care, quality improvement, and financial performance. The quality of care measure indexes agency performance in each of the 12 publicly reported Home Health Compare measures released in April 2010. The quality improvement index is based on changes in the 12 outcomes between data released in September 2009 and April 2010. The financial performance measure represents agency indexed profit margin from the 2009 CMS Cost Reports (or adjusted 2008 results when 2009 data was not available).

Agency performance in each of the three domains was compared against the performance of other organizations in their state and in the country. The three domains were combined into one overall score, using a weighting methodology that gives the greatest importance to quality of care. The top 25 percent of agencies in each region, both facility-based and free standing were identified and added to the national list.

While the 2010 HomeCare Elite list is free to download, OCS HomeCare has a special limited-time offer for U. S. agencies to purchase a HomeCare Elite Analysis Report for only $99. The HomeCare Elite Analysis Report highlights an agency’s scores within the three HomeCare Elite performance measures: quality of care, quality improvement, and financial performance. Plus, agencies can compare their scores to the 2010 HomeCare Elite and the overall performance averages in their home state.

For agencies that want tips on how to achieve quality clinical and financial outcomes as the HomeCare Elite agencies do, DecisionHealth offers the HomeCare Elite Essentials Package. It includes the HomeCare Elite Handbook and two audio CDs of case studies from HomeCare Elite agencies.

About OCS HomeCare

OCS HomeCare empowers home health and hospice organizations with results-driven data intelligence, plus the largest and most accurate homecare database in the industry. Homecare providers, payers, associations, government agencies, vendors, and consultants all turn to OCS to elevate decision-making, raise the bar on results, and bring home positive outcomes. For more information about OCS HomeCare, please visit OCSHomeCare. com or call 888.325.3396.

About DecisionHealth

For more than 30 years, DecisionHealth® has served as the industry's leading source for news, analysis and instructional guidance with cutting-edge information sources such as Part B News, Home Health Line, Medicare Compliance Alert, Inside the Joint Commission and Specialty Coders Pink Sheets. Our unique blend of award-winning staff journalists and unmatched access to health care executives, providers, healthcare organization managers and their revenue-cycle staffs enables us to provide solutions, tools and guidance that’s relied on by nearly 100,000 home health care and specialty physician practice professionals. For more information, please visit DecisionHealth. com or call 877.602.3835.

# # #

You have read this article health with the title . You can bookmark this page URL http://ysagabriellechong.blogspot.com/2004/06/ocs-homecare-and-decisionhealth.html. Thanks!

Innovative Service Provides Online Consumers with Local Health Insurance Referrals

Innovative Service Provides Online Consumers with Local Health Insurance Referrals

Today, Arizona's justifiably leery consumers, have access to a reliable partner to assist them in their search for cost-effective health care and health insurance alternatives and opportunities on the web.

Phoenix, AZ (PRWEB) May 28, 2005

Today, Arizona's justifiably leery consumers, have access to a reliable partner to assist them in their search for cost-effective health care and health insurance alternatives and opportunities on the web. 100% free and readily available to every Arizonan, the range of medical indemnity rates comparison services offered by Arizona Health Insurance Quote can put the most competitive insurance shopping and healthcare research tools available at every consumerÂ’s fingertips at: http://www. lowcosthealthins. com (http://www. lowcosthealthins. com).

With seemingly every cost associated with health care services or medical insurance programs spiraling upwards without constraint, far too many consumers and employee benefit plan sponsors view comprehensive health care coverage as all but prohibitively expensive. Fortunately, that’s simply not the case for the majority of Arizona’s consumers, for them, the barriers to affordable health coverage revolve around their inability to restore the competitiveness on which the insurance system once thrived. Even though a few of us might choose to pin health insurance’s current sorry state of affairs on the overall condition of Arizona’s economy or simply on the mounting cost of general medical care or even on the recent implementation of a series of unpopular federal programs—blamed for slowly eating away at the affordability ratios of small business-sponsored group health policies. What’s indisputably true however is that a basic lack of that abovementioned competition—that has resulted from major health indemnity carriers consolidated their home market’s, is the primary locus of the forces that’s kept millions of Arizonans from obtaining the health insurance protection they so clearly need.

By far the most troubling aspect of the crisis the absence of indemnity competitiveness represents is the simple fact that unless the marketplace makes some adjustment to reintroduce it - the problems facing uninsured Arizonans, from Scottsdale and Tempe to Flagstaff and Tucson, will continue to mount. Between our stateÂ’s growing and increasingly diverse population, a still in recovery national economy and an unfortunate penchant for permitting relatively undetectable corporate mergers, our healthcare system seems to be conspiring to drive medical insurance premiums ever higher, leaving ArizonaÂ’s consumers with a less significant variety of economical healthcare resources. There are unfortunately, also more than a few widely held public misperceptions concerning both the quality and accessibility of various general health and major medical insurance offerings that contribute our problems. These have had such a pervasive effect that even those consumers who live only blocks away from an independent health insurance agency, with the freedom to match their needs up with an affordable health plan, are commonly unable to pick them out of the crowd. But, recently Arizona residents have been getting help with all of those issues and more from http://www. lowcosthealthins. com (http://www. lowcosthealthins. com)

The opportunity they’re providing online has allowed consumers across the Grand Canyon State to effectively compare multiple heath indemnity quotes from a broad selection of insurance carriers in relative anonymity. There are an obvious number of consumer-comfort benefits inherent in an assurance quoting process that was exclusively designed to ensure that consumers would be aware of precisely what their health and well-being alternatives are, in addition to providing a flat-out simpler way to health premium comparison shop–Arizona Health Insurance Quote gives consumers access to:

A one-hundred percent free resource, packed with one-hundred percent unbiased health care related, health indemnity carrier and general medical insurance info as well as impartial tools with which ArizonaÂ’s consumers will be able to evaluate a variety of benefits and disadvantages associated with a wide selection of major medical indemnity plans.

A resource that can leave them 100% certain that they wonÂ’t be over-paying for their healthcare insurance needs. With health care related costs across the state rising steadily, consumers here in Arizona clearly need a better way to find out if they could qualify for lower premiums or a more comprehensive health plan.

By providing all of the above and more, the Grand Canyon State’s newest on-line consumer-information resource, http://www. lowcosthealthins. com (http://www. lowcosthealthins. com) has targeted all of its substantial resources toward ensuring that consumers here have a safe place to get the best available individual and family health, whole and tern life, major medical, disability, dental, long-term-care and income protection insurance info from a completely unbiased source. And, more importantly Low Cost Health Ins also offers all of the resources health care shoppers across the sate will need to connect with neighborhood agencies willing to go the extra mile to find an affordably priced insurance package that’ll be perfect for their particular needs. With employers steadily reversing their former practice of absorbing insurance premium increases, it should come as no surprise that large numbers of understandably worried consumers are increasingly turning to services such as Low Cost Health Ins—for unaffiliated health quotes, general health care information and to help them in their search for a reputable and experienced locally-based insurance agency.

About Low Cost Health Ins

Low Cost Health Ins was created to provide its home stateÂ’s health insurance consumers with 100% free health indemnity quotes from a range of highly-regarded medical insurance carriers, matching health care patrons from Flagstaff and Scottsdale to Tucson and Tempe with the health carrier and health plan best suited to their needs. Health care consumers in Arizona whoÂ’re interested in a free health quote are invited to visit: http://www. lowcosthealthins. com (http://www. lowcosthealthins. com). Low Cost Health Ins is a wholly U. S. owned and operated insurance portal.

# # #

You have read this article health with the title . You can bookmark this page URL http://ysagabriellechong.blogspot.com/2004/06/innovative-service-provides-online.html. Thanks!