Home-based care providers, including hospices, must advocate for themselves and their patients with state and federal government agencies and legislators, according to Dr. Steve Landers, president and CEO of the National Alliance for Care at Home.

Landers made these remarks at the Alliance’s inaugural Annual Meeting and Exposition in New Orleans. The event marks the first annual meeting the organization has held since the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization (NHPCO) and the National Association for Home Care & Hospice (NAHC) merged to form the Alliance.

“As an alliance, we’re growing. Our membership has been growing. We’ve been able to come together,” Landers said in a Sunday night keynote. “We merged some legacy organizations to make ourselves stronger. We went from having two companies and two buildings and two leadership groups and we’ve gotten into one. We’re a well-functioning team.”

National Alliance for Care at Home

Landers during the last decade held executive leadership roles at Hebrew SeniorLife and Visiting Nurse Association (VNA) Health Group Inc. He most recently served as president of the consulting and advisory company Landers StratAGEy. Landers is a board-certified physician in hospice and palliative care, as well as family and geriatric medicine. He also holds a masters degree in public health policy and management.

Before joining the Alliance, Landers served on the board of several home care-based organizations and engaged with state legislators and Congress members. He has also advocated and discussed regulatory and policy changes with the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) officials.

At the conference, Landers urged the assembled health care providers and other stakeholders to remain engaged with government officials on home-based care issues.

Top-of-mind policy issues for the Alliance include proposed home health payment rate cuts, opposing a Medicare Advantage hospice carve-in and urging for reinstatement of pandemic era telehealth flexibilities, Landers said in the keynote.

“I just want to encourage all of you to stay involved, to continue to advocate, to continue to do it in a unified way. Our industry, depending on how you measure it — our entire home care, hospice, home health, care at home industry — only represents about 1% of advocacy resources that are happening in Washington,” Landers said. “So we’ve got to stick together. We’ve got to work together to amplify our voices and find common ground so that we’re not contradicting one another and stepping over one another to make sure that message is heard.”