Home Health Best Practices for Reducing Hospitalizations
As certified HHAs already know, Medicare is tracking your hospital admission rates. Hospital re-admission rates are tracked for all providers...hospitals, nursing homes, rehabilitation, dialysis facilities... because a hospital admission may suggest a breakdown in patient care.Around...
To Be a 5-Star Agency, Pay Close Attention to Rehabilitation Potential
Value-based Purchasing (VBP) & Medicare Reimbursement
Medicare's Value-Based Purchasing (VBP) became effective for all certified home health agencies on 1/1/2023. Under VBP your Agency's Medicare payments are determined by three conditions: (1) CAHPS - patient satisfaction scores, (2)...
Home Health Ethics: Explaining Patient Rights on Admission
In the healthcare setting, ethical behavior includes
-
-
- respecting patient choice,
- protecting patient confidentiality, privacy, and security, and
- administering health care services according to professionally-accepted standards of practice.
-
Can Your Governing Body Answer These 10 Questions?
Medicare's Conditions of Participation (CoP) requires a Home Health Governing Body that must oversee hundreds of policies and procedures to monitor and regulate infection control, quality assurance, fiscal performance and accounting, emergency preparedness, employee credentials and...
Home Health CoPs: Emergency Preparedness Checklist
In January 2018 Medicare made multiple changes to the language of the condition regarding Emergency Preparedness §484.102. Medicare also created an exception to emergency preparedness testing and drills: if the HHA experiences an emergency - that requires activation of the emergency...
Does Your Annual Meeting Include These 11 (Required) Items?
Medicare's Conditions of Participation (CoP) requires an HHA's Governing Body to regularly evaluate the policies and procedures that regulate the Agency's:
- Agency-wide risk management
- Patient-specific risk management
- Emergency Preparedness
- Employee Management: continuing education,...
The 12 Best In-Services for Home Health Aides
As you know, Medicare's requirements for home health aide in-services are the following (Standard §484.80(d); Tag G774):"§484.80(d) Standard: In-service training. A home health aide must receive at least 12 hours of in-service training during each 12-month period. In-service training...
Infection Control Teaching for Home Health Patients
Given the current focus on COVID-19, other infectious processes commonly experienced by home health patients - pneumonia, UTI’s, hepatitis, and wound infections - still pose significant challenges to patients and home health clinicians.