In 2012, the Center for Caregiver Advancement (then known as the California Long-Term Care Education Center) received a three-year, $11.8 million Health Care Innovation Award from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ Innovation Center, established by the Affordable Care Act to test innovative service delivery models, for a pilot project called the Care Team Integration of the Home-Based Workforce. This project’s innovative contribution to health care was to recast and enhance the role of home care providers through training and integration into the health care system. This project showed that training home care workers is associated with better care, stronger health outcomes and at lower costs through reductions in consumers’ use of the Emergency Department and hospitalizations, particularly repeat visits to the Emergency Room and readmissions to the hospital, which has the potential to create tremendous cost savings to Medicare and Medicaid. Home care providers are in direct and frequent contact with the consumers they care for and are in the unique position to positively impact consumers’ health.
Home Care Integration Training Project Brief
