Bring Our Children Home: Improving Access To Home Nursing Services For Medically Fragile Children

Melinda Dutton and James Lytle*
Coalition For Medically Fragile Children
March 2005

When medically permissible and desired by the family, allowing medically fragile children to be cared for at home is best for their health and development. Children thrive both emotionally and developmentally in the care of a supportive family and the risk of infection is reduced for a child cared for at home.

Continuous home nursing services enable medically fragile children to be cared for at home. In multiple studies, home nursing services have been shown to be dramatically less costly than hospital care. Yet for many children enrolled in the Medicaid program, continuous home nursing care is not an option. Faced with woefully inadequate reimbursement rates, a growing number of medically fragile children in New York are unable to find the continuous home nursing services they need to be cared for at home. Even when everybody agrees that the child is eligible for the services and that it is better for the child and less expensive for the system for the child to be at home, families often cannot find nurses to provide the care.

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