In the midst of two weeks of busy constituency work, U.S. Rep. Judy Biggert (R-Ill.) toured Central DuPage Hospital in Winfield and made several home visits on Wednesday to assess the state of home health care in her district.
“Some of these hospitals and health systems that offer home health care can’t afford to have any further spending reductions and stay in business,” Biggert said after the visits.
“They are the institutions that provide care to older Americans,” she said. “Further reductions really hurt their access to quality health care.”
Away from the committees and meetings of Washington, Biggert visited two elderly patients in Naperville with acute illnesses: a woman with a form of Lou Gehrig’s disease and a man with lung cancer that has spread to his brain.
Biggert, who worked on the board of directors for the Visiting Nurse Association of Chicago, has served on the Government Reform Committee, which hears from agencies that make Medicare payments.
She said she would continue looking for a solution to the home health-care questions when she returns to Washington.
Charles Simpson, spokesman for Central DuPage Health, which owns Central DuPage Hospital and CNS Home Health Care, said the visit was “a chance to show Rep. Biggert how policies in Washington are affecting her constituents back home.”
Simpson said that after the Balanced Budget Act passed in 1993, Central DuPage Health and most home-care providers nationwide suffered a severe cut in resources.
CNS receives $3,200 per patient per year, and the average home visit costs $100, Simpson said. CNS must absorb the loss for patients that need more than 32 visits.
“These patients . . . don’t have a lot of means to access health care or pay for it,” Simpson said. “They are really sick people who need frequent, basic services.”
Simpson and Biggert acknowledged that the government is stuck with the cost of caring for these patients. People who lose their home-care benefits are sent to emergency rooms and nursing homes, usually at an even greater cost to the government, they said.
“Right now, it’s inefficient all the way around,” Simpson said.
