There are a number of issues and trends impacting the healthcare industry that should be of particular note for home health providers as the push to provide better care to more individuals continues.
No question, mobile devices have transformed home health care delivery. Highly portable laptops, tablets and smartphones make it simple and convenient for nurses, therapists and other clinicians to document vital data, access patient records and check drug interactions – right in patient homes.
Fueled by aging Baby Boomers, the need for coordinated, team-based patient care is spilling beyond hospital walls into the quickly expanding realm of home health and hospice care.
Now that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has introduced a new Quality of Patient Care Star Rating system to help consumers make better-informed decisions about home health care providers, home health agencies face more pressure than ever to deliver excellent patient outcomes, operate efficiently and prove themselves trusted partners to hospitals, physicians and other stakeholders.
When care providers at Androscoggin Home Care & Hospice, the largest Home Care & Hospice agency in Maine, initially launched their telehealth program, they were quickly able to see positive results from utilizing Honeywell’s Genesis family of remote patient monitoring devices to track the daily vital signs of patients and streamline patient-acquired data into one internet-accessible clinical dashboard.
When home care providers at VNA Home Health Hospice (VNA) looked at ways to improve their already-successful telehealth program, they realized patient care could be improved by giving physicians the ability to monitor their patients’ health status, using VNA’s existing telehealth system.
In January of 2011, the St. Alexius Medical Center (SAMC) and the Great Plains Telehealth Resource and Assistance Center (gpTRAC) joined forces to evaluate the potential of a new telehealth program. Their goal was to determine whether they could improve access and care for their many patients with chronic conditions who live in rural areas. In order to determine its effectiveness, SAMC and gpTRAC worked together to develop research parameters by which to quantify the results of the program.
Since early 2009 the cost of fuel has doubled, with no reprieve in sight. For a typical service organization, this could result in additional annual costs of $2,500 per vehicle; bringing today’s cost to $5,000 per vehicle per year.
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