The state’s health insurance program for the poor will begin limiting home-health services on September 8th for almost all adult enrollees.
Enrollees will be capped at 35 hours a week for home health aides—those who help with basic tasks like bathing and dressing.
Private duty nurses have medical capabilities. They’ll be capped at 27 hours a week. TennCare’s medical director Wendy Long says the state’s home health bill has gone from 18 million dollars to 243-million since the year 2000.
“We recognized this was not a level of spending or a level of increase in utilization that we were going to be able to support financially on and ongoing basis.”
Long estimates about 1-thousand people are using more home health services than the cap. The state is in the process of notifying them that it might be cheaper for them to be cared for in a nursing home.
The caps will not affect adults dependent on ventilators or those with tracheotomies. The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid have approved the limits and notices were mailed on Friday.
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