Dear Colleagues:

We are fast approaching another important milestone, the 25th Annual Meeting of the National Association for Home Care and Hospice. It will be held in Baltimore, Maryland (some 30 miles north of Washington, DC) on October 14-18, 2006.

This is the time of year where we count our blessings and chart our course for the future. We have a great deal to celebrate. Our association predates the Medicare hospice benefit and plays a major role in the development and public acceptance of home care. When NAHC was created 25 years ago, home care amounted to less than one percent of national health care expenditures and approximately the same percentage of Medicare and Medicaid spending.

In the past 25 years, the public awareness and acceptance of home care and hospice have increased dramatically as have the expenditures. The U.S. Supreme Court has proclaimed in a key decision that there is a Constitutional right to receive health care for citizens in "the least restrictive environment". The National Governors Association last year named long-term care as the number one problem facing the nation and pointed to home care as the best answer to this probing national problem. The Bush Administration and Congress have been busy implementing plans to rebalance Medicaid expenditures moving money and resources from institutional to home and community based care.

NAHC has helped to put home care front and center on the health care state; the question that remains is:"What kind of home and community care will be offered to what class of people and by whom?" Will mainstream, licensed, and certified home care agencies be employed or will the states take the risky and less expensive road of sending checks directly to individuals to spend presumably to alleviate their disabilities? The question remains to be answered and the home care community must be proactive to ensure that patients receive the highest quality services.

From the earliest beginnings of our life on this planet, we have learned that there is comfort and strength in coming together. We have learned that in unity there is strength and that a few committed people working together can literally change the world.

We invite you to join in the home care and hospice reunion. Come join us to:

• Learn what we can do together to "rebalance Medicaid expenditures with the right kind of quality home care"
  
• Greet old friends and make new ones; be with people who share our experience and our values
  
• Learn about the latest breakthroughs in technology that will lower costs, allow the provision of services in
  remote areas and enhance the ability to provide quality care
  
• Energize your mind by providing the education and training on the latest procedures, requirements or clinical
  protocols
  
• Refresh your body by taking a break from the difficult job you do in caring for the aged, inform, dying,
  and disabled
  
• Free your soul and rekindle the flame which led you to select a career in home care and hospice
  
• Help celebrate our 25th birthday and our 25 years of caring for the people who devote their lives
  in caring for the infirm, disabled, and dying Americans

Here is to you and all that we have accomplished together. Thank you for all that you have done.

We look forward to seeing you in Baltimore.

With best wishes,

Val J. Halamandaris, President