Imagine suffering a serious injury or enduring an illness that resulted in hospitalization. Once you’ve been treated by doctors, where would you prefer to recover and rehabilitate – in the sterile confines of a hospital room or in the comfort and familiarity of your own home?

For those who have faced this scenario, the answer is simple: home health care provides recovering patients with a safer, more comfortable environment where they can get better without being exposed to infections or illnesses that arise in the hospital setting – where infection risks can compromise their health and delay their recovery process.

That is what makes the Medicare home health program so critical to the nearly 12,000 beneficiaries who rely on these services statewide each year – and it’s why home health is the preferred setting for these patients. In fact, when surveyed, 94% of Medicare beneficiaries say they would prefer to receive post-hospital, short-term care at home rather than in a nursing facility.

As our nation, and particularly the baby boomer generation, continues to age, access to home health care services must grow to meet the increased demand. However, the opposite is currently happening as Medicare continues to target the home health program with devastating cuts that make it increasingly difficult for home health providers to meet the needs of aging patients and communities.

Earlier this year, Medicare released its proposed home health payment rates for 2025, which cut home health services by more than 4% – reducing home health by more than $1.6 million next year in Maine alone. Nationwide, home health cuts will total $25 billion over the next decade. These cuts not only threaten providers, but they also translate to less access to care.

In 2023, just over one-third of Medicare patients (35.7%) referred to home health after a hospitalization by their doctor did not access home health. This is due in large part to limited capacity and a shrinking workforce.

Making matters worse is a serious decline in our health care workforce. While the home care industry in Maine represents one of the largest employers, we are struggling with a workforce shortage – making it more difficult to meet the demand for home care. Considering labor accounts for about half of all home health agency costs, Medicare cuts directly translate to workforce reductions.

More Medicare cuts will only exacerbate these issues, further undermining access to home health care, and keeping patients in the hospital longer– where the risks and costs are higher. If Medicare moves forward with its proposed cuts in 2025 as currently planned, then the impending cuts will threaten the future of home health care services altogether.

Lawmakers in Congress have recognized the serious threat these ongoing cuts pose, one of whom is Maine’s Sen. Susan Collins.

Sen. Collins, along with a bipartisan group of lawmakers in both the Senate and House of Representatives, have introduced the Preserving Access to Home Health Act (S. 2137/H.R. 5159). If passed, this legislation would help protect access to vital home health care services by preventing any further cuts by Medicare until at least 2028.

Congress should work swiftly to stop Medicare home health cuts for the more than 3 million older Americans and their families who currently rely on these services. I thank Sen. Collins for her leadership and urge the rest of the Maine delegation to support policies that prevent future cuts to the Medicare home health benefit – a program older Americans depend on to age with dignity and comfort.