Partnership for Quality Home Healthcare Applauds Senate Finance Committee for Advancing Confirmation of Seema Verma as Administrator of CMS

WASHINGTON, March 2, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Partnership for Quality Home Healthcare – a coalition of home health providers dedicated to improving the integrity, quality, and efficiency of home healthcare for our nation's seniors – today commended the Senate Finance Committee for voting to advance the confirmation of Seema Verma as the next Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to the Senate floor.

"The Partnership supports Ms. Verma's nomination because of her extensive experience in the private sector healthcare field, which we believe contributes to her understanding of the complexity of delivering care in such a highly regulated and tightly controlled environment. The Partnership is eager to work with Ms. Verma on common-sense solutions to reduce regulatory burden and make Medicare's home health benefit more accessible to seniors in need. We also believe that it is critical that the largest health care payer in the nation have a confirmed, permanent Administrator," Colin Roskey, Executive Vice President of the Partnership stated in a letter to the Senate Finance Committee.

Ms. Verma has many years of experience working on Medicaid issues and has a deep understanding of the need to protect vulnerable Americans, like Medicare's home health beneficiaries who are documented as older, poorer and sicker than the overall Medicare population.  She also supports patient-centered approaches to healthcare that ensure patients and their doctors are making decisions about healthcare, not the federal government.

In a letter sent to Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, MD last month, the Partnership expressed appreciation for the Administration's efforts to reduce regulatory burdens on healthcare providers and stated, "The value proposition of home care is real. It can work to prevent costly hospitalizations and re-hospitalizations, and plays an important role in providing chronic care management. The home is the cost-effective setting that patients and their families prefer, and we look forward to working with this Administration to create workable solutions to preserve this important benefit."

"The Partnership enthusiastically encourages the full Senate confirmation of Ms. Verma and looks forward to working with CMS to strengthen the delivery of home health for the nearly 3.5 million older Americans who rely on the Medicare benefit to access home-based care," Roskey added.

The Partnership for Quality Home Healthcare was established to assist government officials in ensuring access to skilled home healthcare services for seniors and disabled Americans. Representing community- and hospital-based home healthcare agencies across the U.S., the Partnership is dedicated to developing innovative reforms to improve the quality, efficiency and integrity of home healthcare. To learn more, visit www.homehealth4america.org. To join the home healthcare policy conversation, connect with us on Facebook, Twitter and our blog.

SOURCE Partnership for Quality Home Healthcare

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http://www.homehealth4america.org