Why Advocacy Matters in Home Health | Featuring Mike Sokoloski, Hearts for Home Care (Bayada)

November 22, 2025 00:03:32
Why Advocacy Matters in Home Health | Featuring Mike Sokoloski, Hearts for Home Care (Bayada)
Home Health Revealed (+Palliative and Hospice)
Why Advocacy Matters in Home Health | Featuring Mike Sokoloski, Hearts for Home Care (Bayada)

Nov 22 2025 | 00:03:32

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Show Notes

In this episode of Home Health Revealed, we sit down with Mike Sokoloski, Director, Grassroots Advocacy at BAYADA Home Health Care to discuss one of the most impactful ways you can support home health- advocacy. 

Mike shares how clinicians, agency leaders, and even patients can get involved at the state and national levels to influence legislation, improve reimbursement models, and protect access to home care services.

This episode covers why advocacy is essential for the future of home health, how to get involved with your state and national associations, like Alliance for Home Care, including practical steps to take- even if you're new to advocacy. 

Bayada is also launching their new podcast, "Home Care, You Say?" (worth following!). 

Learn more about advocacy and get involved at heartsforhomecare.com 

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Episode Transcript

[00:00:02] Speaker A: Welcome to Home Health Revealed where we share real stories from industry leaders about home health, palliative and hospice care brought to you by Velocity. Grow your home health or hospice agency with the power of Velocity. Velocity's easy to read coding and revenue cycle dashboards let you grab your cup of coffee and quickly see the health of your organization. Welcome to Home Health Revealed. We are here at the Alliance 2025 in New Orleans and I New Orleans and my Northern Ohio accent loves to say New Orleans, but here we are anyhow. And I have Michael with me and he is going to talk with us about some of the topics that he is passionate about. Michael, will you go ahead and introduce yourself, tell us where you're from, who you're with, company wise, and then let's, let's just jump right in. [00:00:45] Speaker B: Sure. Mike Sokoloski I'm the Director of Grassroots Advocacy at Bayada Home Health Care and we are Hearts for Home Care is a separate organization part of dayada Home Health Care, where we're a social welfare advocacy organization. So we have over 12,000 members of Advocates supporting home care throughout the whole spectrum of offerings from home health, hospice in home care, for private duty care, nursing. [00:01:11] Speaker A: And Bayada is getting ready to release their own podcast. [00:01:15] Speaker B: We are so under the Hearts for Home Care umbrella. We have Home Care you say coming out in two weeks and we will be having conversations about home care from legislative, regulatory perspective, from those in the community, receiving home care caregivers and others impacted by delivery of care and bringing awareness and education to the community at large. [00:01:40] Speaker A: Super cool. So if you are a podcast listener and you're already listening to Home Health Revealed, so your top echelon of people go ahead and add this into your shows to take a listen to. Now I want to ask you a about maybe some of the listeners and what they can do if they want to take part in advocacy, if they see the need for something, what are activities, where is information that they can do to really make a difference in advocating for home health and hospice? [00:02:05] Speaker B: Very timely that we're at the alliance for Care at Home conference. So like them in the states, there are associations as well. So if you're into home care advocacy, being a former client or patient or being an employee, the best way is to keep track of what is happening at the association levels, either federal or state. And I say that if you're a consumer of Medicare, that would be home health and hospice, you would want to follow the alliance, especially because they are by far the best in terms of informing everyone on what's going on and how they could jump in. And then if you're looking to support Medicaid recipients then each state has their own home care association and they are the best asset or resource to look up and stay in touch with. And then on the personal note, hearts for Home care even though we are associated with Bayada Home Health Care we are open to anyone who supports home care advocacy and they can find us on our website and we also provide just information for free so that everyone has the opportunity to share their story and elevate their voice. I love that. [00:03:14] Speaker A: Can you share the website with the listeners? [00:03:16] Speaker B: Sure. It's it's a very easy one. Hearts for home care all1word.com. [00:03:20] Speaker A: Okay well thank you so much. I appreciate you sitting down talking with me here for a minute. So nice to meet you and thanks for all that you're doing with the space. Thank you. [00:03:29] Speaker B: Pleasure. I appreciate the opportunity. [00:03:30] Speaker A: Thanks.

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