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| Fuel costs sapping home health care Mon, 21 Jul 2008 03:12 EDT ALBANY, N.Y. . Stethoscope? Check. Bandages and medications? Check. Money for fuel? Uh-oh. U.S. home health care workers, particularly those in rural areas, are suffering from financial headaches caused by the escalating cost of transportation, forcing some to borrow cash from co-workers in between paychecks and others to consider leaving the industry altogether. Some providers of home care are doling out prepaid gas cards, rental cars and other perks in an effort to retain their workers, who care for roughly 12 million older and disabled patients nationwide and drive an estimated 5 billion miles a year, said a recent study by the National Association for Home Care and Hospice. The industry also is thinking about abandoning uneconomical home visits in far-flung locations, and increasingly checking patients' blood pressures, heart rates, blood-sugar levels and other vital signs via remote monitoring systems, which many companies previously deemed too expensive. |
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