One of the information sources I've found both useful and enjoyable is the weekly email blast from the Home Care Consulting firm Boyd and Nicholas, managed by Tom Boyd and Tom Nicholas.  I met these guys for the first time at the NAHC Financial Managers Conference in Boston.  These guys have the right equation for balancing business and pleasure.  They're a serious force in home care and experts on the "Cost Report" (in fact they call themselves The Cost Report People).  But at the same time, they're a couple of fun guys.  Their booth prizes are generally nice bottles of wine with stories attached, and when I met Tom Boyd at the tradeshow, he was dressed for success in shorts, high socks and Birkenstocks... Below is a banner that links to their site.

They do a nice job covering many aspects of what's going on in the industry including best practices, legislation, success stories, and the latest trends.  They also conclude each weekly report (entitled "Every Wednesday - Point of Light" with a few profound quotes or some humor (usually kind of corny but bearable).

Below is a sample of content from this week's report.  As you'll see, they keep on top of the industry and provide nice concise summaries (giving credit to the source and marked as excerpts).  This particular sampling covers The BlackBerry® Report:
The National State of the Home Care Industry conducted by Fazzi and Associates, and an Article from Healthleaders Media entitled Four Reasons for Optimism About the Future of Healthcare. 

Please enjoy these updates from Tom and Tom:

The BlackBerry® Report:
The National State of the Home Care Industry
October 10, 2009 (excerpt)
 
The study was sponsored by Research in Motion (RIM), ....the National Association for Home Care and Hospice (NAHC) ....and Fazzi Associates.
 
BlackBerry First Insight Report
 
The following are ten insights that emerged during the first analysis of the BlackBerry Report: ....
 

1. Fiscal, Billing, and Back Office Vendors Have Heavy Penetration in Home Care But Changes May Be In the Wind:  Seventy-two percent of all agencies now use back-office software systems provided by one of a number of vendors....
   
2. Electronic Medical Record Systems Are Proving Valuable:  Just over 65% of all agencies now have EMR systems....
   
3. Use of Point of Care Grows as Size of Agencies Grow:  Nearly 40% of all agencies now use some form of POS system in the field....Of those over ten million (61.5%) use POS.
   
4. Use of Handheld POS Expected to Have Largest Growth: ....
   
5. Major Shift Coming in Home Health Aide Documentation:  Presently, 78.3% of Home Health Aides document personal care using paper forms....
   
6. Leaders Use of Smartphones Increases as Size of Agency Increases: ....well over 50% of those with revenues of five million now use smartphones....
   
7. Having a Telehealth System and Using the System Are Two Different Things:  Today, 23% of agencies report using telehealth systems, up from 17.1% in 2006.  Twenty-two percent of agencies, however, report that on any given day, less than 25% of their units are in use....
   
8. Agencies Are Preparing for Cost Cuts: ....72.6% of agencies report that they are. ....
   
9. Charity/Free Care Significant, Growing But Not the Same: ....Two-thirds of all agencies report that a minimum of 1% of their revenues for free care, with 21.9% reporting that more than 5% is given for free care. ....
   
10. Per Visit Pay Models Growing But Not for All Types of Agencies:  Over 36% of agencies are now using the pay-per-visit as their primary payment model for clinical staff. .... More than 50% of for-profit agencies use it, while only 17.7% of not-for-profit agencies now use it.  Urban agencies (41.8%) are far more likely to use it than rural agencies (17%), ....

♦♦♦♦♥♦♦♦♦

 
Four Reasons for Optimism About the Future of Healthcare
HealthLeaders Media, October 15, 2009 (excerpt)

1. Healthcare IT is improving.
2. Administrative costs are getting attention.
3. Payment reform is a reality
4. Leadership makes a difference.

♦♦♦♦♥♦♦♦♦