By Adam Healy, McKnight's Home Care (4/18/25)

Florida House lawmakers unanimously passed a bill that would remove certain geographic restrictions affecting home health providers and allow contracted nurses to conduct initial patient visits.

“The reason this bill is here is to try to increase access to healthcare while maintaining quality and creating more flexibility…to ensure folks can continue accessing this healthcare,” Rep. Gallop Franklin, the bill’s sponsor, said during a Florida House meeting Wednesday.

HB 1353 passed by a vote of 115 to zero. A Senate companion bill, SB 1412, was unanimously approved by the Senate Rules Committee Wednesday and awaits further action.

If signed into law, the legislation would eliminate geographic limitations on the home health agencies that an administrator may manage at a given time. It would also allow nurses under contract by home health agencies to furnish initial and discharge visits for patients. 

Finally, HB 1353 would overhaul Florida’s Excellence in Home Health Program to encourage participation among more providers. If passed, the bill would implement new quality measures judging agencies’ patient outcomes, contributions to daily living support, staff satisfaction, worker retention rates and innovation in care delivery, among other measures.

If passed, the bill would be effective July 1.

“Home healthcare is truly a more efficient cost for us to deliver healthcare services,” Franklin said Wednesday. “There are so many services that don’t have to happen inside the hospital, and they can happen in the comfort of homes.”

HB 1353 is one of several bills Florida lawmakers have advanced in recent years that aim to give home health providers more flexibility. In May 2024, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) passed legislation allowing advanced practice nurse practitioners to prescribe home health services for patients covered by Medicaid. This law, which had also been introduced by Franklin, aimed to increase access to home healthcare while saving the state money on medical costs.