It is only when you follow the best practices in home care that you will be able to establish your home care business in this competitive world. Home care, especially medication management and wound care and dressings are the most important areas that the home care nurses should focus on.
It is when a home care agency focuses on these matters, they will be able to:
- Increase the rate of patient healing
- Decrease the need for emergency care and hospitalization and
- Reduce the chances of wound infection.
Ideally, the primary focus of a reliable and reputed home care agency should be on reducing the potential for any adverse event. In addition to that, their prime objective is also around reducing the supply cost as well as increase the satisfaction level of both the patients and the physicians.
In order to ensure that they achieve their service goals, they will need to implement better service policy and follow the protocols as set for providing home care to the patients. This may sound a bit too much for an agency but the benefits of it is worth the effort. The best way to proceed for any home care agency that want to excel in their service is:
- To know about the science behind all such services
- Establish the required home care service protocols
- Train their staff and educate their referral sources and
- Administer buy-in.
All these are the most critical components that will result in the success of a home care agency and provide the best patient experience just as https://myallamericancare.com provides to others.
Avail better opportunities
When the home care agencies care for their servi9ce components and improve their service policies, they will not only be able to improve their performance but will also be able to make the best out of the different opportunities that the home care service industry provides.
They will need to invest a considerable amount of time in other different areas apart from formulating their best home care service strategies. These areas include:
- Assessment of the condition of the patients
- Evaluation of the needs of the patients and
- Make arrangements for proper care coordination.
They should always rely on home care givers who are not only courteous and highly trained but also use nurses who have the skills necessary for an Advanced Practice Nurse, or APN. It is by the virtue of their training that these APNs will not only act as a nurse but also as:
- Educators
- Treaters
- Consultants and
- Care coordinators.
Looking things at a different level, these APNs con also bring in the ability to diagnose and treat which has been lacking for so long in the home care service arena. This is actually the most important part for improving home care practice and to develop the emphasis on better care coordination.
This is typically the basic requirement of the patients now given the fact that they now have to navigate a more complex healthcare system. Also, they suffer from several chronic conditions now.
It is the self-management programs that are designed on the basis of the education and behavior of the patients that will enable the trained APNs to act as an ideal clinician who will be able to coordinate the care process for such complex group of home patients.
Follow the Infusion Therapy Standards
The development process of the home care agencies should also include following the 2016 Infusion Therapy Standards of Practice. According to this practice standard, the nurses are supposed to cover a wide variety of areas of practice. These standards are developed on the basis of the subject headings and keywords for each standard.
This standard as well as the methodology of formulating this standard is described in the Standards document. It is to be followed by all players in the healthcare industry including:
- Pharmacists
- Nurses
- Physicians and
- Even an attorney.
The Infusion Nursing Standards, which was changed to Infusion Therapy Standards in 2016, recognizes the responsibility of any healthcare professional and clinician involved in the practice. It also includes technicians as well as unlicensed assistant personnel apart from the physicians and pharmacists.
Since nurses in home care practice are the primary direct care providers the Standards focuses them and their responsibility in the revised 5th edition of INS Policies and Procedures. This edition includes new features of the care procedure such as the key points and areas that needs to be assessed to provide better patient education and home care implications.
Organizing data and information
The home care agencies must also work with different data and information that will help them to know the cause of the condition that the patients are suffering from. They must not only gather such data and info but should also organize these in the best possible way. This will help them in:
- Better analysis of their services
- Maintaining records in a better way and manage it properly so that it is easily accessible to all responsible
- Outline their service objectives properly
- Set achievable target dates
- Assign different job responsibilities to different persons and
- Keep proper track of their service team to ensure best results always and every time.
This will in turn help them to manage more patients as well as meet the service standards and the expectations of the patients and their families as well. The data and information can be collected from different sources such as:
- Team charters
- Project plans
- Agendas and
- Patient history.
All these will keep their team focused and on the right track to achieve success. The workflow sheets and timelines will help them to have a better understanding among all the players as well as identify the disciplines that each should follow.
Summing it up
In order to improve the performance, all modern home care agencies should focus on technical aspects of management that includes affinity charts, flow charts and fishbone diagrams. These are the best visual formats that will allow them to understand how each care service is carried out to eliminate chances of failure as well as visualize their success!
