Budget Cuts For Home Health Care

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Created on Saturday, 15 December 2018 19:04

Written by Kayla Hebert

 ST JOHNSBURY - The Caledonia Home Care and Hospice group has served thousands of families over the years. Offering home care for expecting mothers and dependant patients to offering Hospice care for those dealing with losing a loved one.

"The home care and hospice staff are some of the most dedicated and generous people that I know" says director for the Caledonia Home Care and Hospice facility Trenty Burgess.

But a new federal budget cut is affecting home care and hospice facilities especially more rurally located facilities such as this one in the Northeast kingdom. The group that provides medicare aid to home care facilities is taking away three percent of the budget that is a bonus for rural areas. The three percent helps pay for additional hours and travel that has to be done in spread out rural locations.

" For our area and other areas in the state of Vermont that is a big cut to areas that are really needing that support." said Burgess.

Just in this passed fiscal year the facility made over 60 thousand visits and traveled over 700 thousand miles.

"We may see patients for four to five hours of the day then the rest of the day is for traveling and filing documents" says Burgess.

The cut will be made gradually over a three year period.