Home Health: The Need for a National Policy to Better Provide for the Elderly

The Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) administers the principal federal programs which provide home health care. The main home health care programs that are medically oriented are Medicare and Medicaid. Proposed changes to the Medicare and Medicaid programs include eliminating the requirement that beneficiaries be confined to their homes and be in need of skilled care, limitations on the number of home visists, and the addition of homemaker services in fiscal year 1978. Except for the removal of the skilled care requirement, the costs associated with these changes would not be prohibitive and could provide disincentives to institutionalization.