2022 Call for Presenters

The HHAC conference is known for offering up to date education on relevant topics within Home Care, Hospice, Private Duty and general topics that cover all three of these tracks. Do you have a hot topic that you would like to submit to present at the 2022 Conference in Keystone, CO, May 5-6, 2022? Take a look at what you will need during the submission process and submit your proposal before February 13, 2022 in order to be considered during the review process.

DEADLINES:

Submission Deadline: February 13, 2022
Review Period: February 14, 2022 – February 25, 2022
Accepted Presenters Notified By: March 4, 2022

ITEMS NEEDED FOR THE SUBMISSION:

• Lead presenter information (Name, Contact Information, Bio and Headshot)
• Any Fees that are charged for the presentation
• Presentation title
• Presentation description
• 3 learning objectives
• Applicable track the the presentation would fall under
• Level of the content
• Target Audience

OTHER INFORMATION:

• For the annual conference, the primary presenter will receive a 50% discount on conference registration.  A second presenter will receive a 25% discount on conference registration.  Additional presenters must pay applicable conference registration fees in full. Speakers are required to register for conference if they plan on attending any sessions outside of their presentation.
  
  
• If selected to speak at the annual conference, you will be contacted by the Meeting Planner for the conference to complete the Speaker Agreement and provide all of the required information.  

CLICK HERE for more information & to submit proposal.

The Power of Boosters

The Wall Street Journal

The C.D.C. has begun to publish data on Covid outcomes among people who have received booster shots, and the numbers are striking: 

• Weekly Average Deaths per 100,000 (From Oct. to Nov. 2021)
• Unvaccinated 7.8 
• Vaccinated, No Booster .6 
• With Booster .1

Based on U.S. Jurisdictions / Source C.D.C

This data underscores both the power of the Covid vaccines and their biggest weakness — namely, their gradual fading of effectiveness over time, as is also the case with many other vaccines. If you received two Moderna or Pfizer vaccine shots early last year, the official statistics still count you as “fully vaccinated.” In truth, you are only partially vaccinated. 

Once you get a booster, your risk of getting severely ill from Covid is tiny. It is quite small even if you are older or have health problems.

The average weekly chance that a boosted person died of Covid was about one in a million during October and November (the most recent available C.D.C. data). Since then, the chances have no doubt been higher, because of the Omicron surge. But they will probably be even lower in coming weeks, because the surge is receding and Omicron is milder than earlier versions of the virus. For now, one in a million per week seems like a reasonable estimate.

That risk is not zero, but it is not far from it. The chance that an average American will die in a car crash this week is significantly higher — about 2.4 per million. So is the average weekly death rate from influenza and pneumonia — about three per million

With a booster shot, Covid resembles other respiratory illnesses that have been around for years. It can still be nasty. For the elderly and immunocompromised, it can be debilitating, even fatal — much as the flu can be. The Omicron surge has been so terrible because it effectively subjected tens of millions of Americans to a flu all at once.

For the unvaccinated, of course, Covid remains many times worse than the flu.

Read Full Article

COVID-19 Updates from NAHC

Moderna Announces Full US Approval for its COVID-19 Vaccine

Moderna announced Monday that U.S. health regulators granted full approval to its COVID-19 vaccine, a shot that’s been given to tens of millions of Americans since its emergency authorization over a year ago.

The action by the Food and Drug Administration means the agency has completed the same rigorous, time-consuming review of Moderna’s shot as dozens of other long-established vaccines.

The decision was bolstered by real-world evidence from the more than 200 million doses administered in the U.S. since the FDA cleared the shot in December 2020. The FDA granted full approval of Pfizer’s vaccine last August.

Read more

'Stealth' Omicron Variant BA.2 Circulating in Almost Half of US, but CDC Exercises Caution: Report

Is BA.2 going to be omicron 2.0?

There are now at least 127 known cases of the subvariant BA.2, otherwise known as the "stealth" variant, circulating in almost half of the United States that international experts suggest is more contagious as omicron, according to a recent CNBC report.

But Kristen Nordlund, a CDC spokesperson, in a Monday statement to The Washington Post, cautions, "Currently, there are insufficient data to determine whether the BA.2 lineage is more transmissible or has a fitness advantage over the BA.1 lineage[omicron]."

Read more

What Causes Long Covid? Scientists are Zeroing in on the Answer.

Even as the number of new Covid-19 cases in the US is dropping, hundreds of thousands of Americans are still testing positive every day. More than 28 million new cases have been reported since Omicron emerged in the US just two months ago, and the variant now drives 99.9 percent of cases, as of January 22, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Thanks to vaccines, boosters, and increasingly available treatments, most people who get infected today won’t end up in the hospital or die. A big question, however, looms over the survivors: What about long Covid?

Read more

Updated Document Getting Started with HQRP CASPER QM Reports Now Available on the HQRP Requirements and Best Practices Webpage.

To assist hospice providers in understanding and using the CASPER QM Reports that now include claims-based measures, CMS has updated this fact sheet to reflect the changes to the HQRP based on the (FY) 2022 Hospice Final Rule. This renamed and revised document, Getting Started with HQRP CASPER QM Reports can be found in the Provider Toolkit section of the HQRP Requirements and Best Practices webpage.