October 2007 e-Bulletin

The Home Health Quality Improvement (HHQI) Campaign is already in its eighth month! The Campaign has over 5,400 home health agencies registered, which is over 60 percent of Medicare-certified home care agencies. This fall, the Best Practice Intervention Packages (BPIPs) have focused on the well-timed subjects of Immunizations (September), Physician Relationships (October) and Fall Prevention (November).

The input of home health agencies through the monthly BPIP surveys has been valuable to the HHQI team. We have several agency comments reflected in the October BPIP. Additionally, we have continued support from home health stakeholders and individual health care professionals. The support from the home health community is continuing to make the HHQI Campaign a success!

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Best Practice Intervention Package:  Physician Relationships

This package focuses on Keys to Collaborative Physician Relationships:

1. Determine physician preferences by conducting a physician/office team satisfaction survey.
2. Determine and strive to remove barriers for collaborative physician relationships.
3. Use the SBAR communication technique.
4. Empower physicians to utilize care plan oversight as a design for quality patient care.
5. Ensure that the nursing staff possesses current clinical knowledge of disease-specific symptom management that is applied when communicating patient assessment information to physicians.

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Previous Best Practice Intervention Packages

September - Immunizations
August - Telemonitoring
July - Teletriage
June - Phone Monitoring and Frontloading Visits
May - Medication Management
April - Emergency Care Planning
March - Hospitalization Risk Assessment

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The HHQI Web site is updated weekly with additional information, tools and resources. Bookmark the Web site and visit it often. The Quick Links on the home page facilitates easy travel to important sites.

The Hospice and Palliative Nurses Association

The Hospice and Palliative Nurses Association (HPNA) allowed Quality Insights of Pennsylvania the opportunity to record one of the sessions that was presented at the HPNA Clinical Practice Forum: Managing Non-Cancer Patients. "Maximizing MD/RN Communications" was a role-play exercise between a physician and a nurse. Two scenarios are included on this video in addition to key points from both the physician and nurse perspectives. The video is available for download and use at the agency for leadership or clinician level to initiate discussion on determining key methods to improving physician relationships.

Immunization BPIP Survey

The survey results from the Immunization BPIP are now available on the HHQI Web site.

The Best Practice Intervention survey helps the HHQI team to:

• improve the packages
• understand barriers to accessing the packages, etc.
• know whether we are on target with the materials
• recognize when there is a need to modify the materials

Home Health Agency of the Month

Baptist Home Health Care
Jacksonville, FL

"The Home Health Quality Improvement National Campaign has assisted us in continuing to promote high quality home health care services. Thank you for helping us keep our patients at home and assisting our agency to achieve better outcomes." - Lori Overstreet, RN-BC, BSN, Regulatory Compliance Manager

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Spotlight on HHQI Campaign Champion

1. Assessing Risk, Phone Monitoring and Frontloading Visits
2. Patient Emergency Plans and Teletriage
3. Physician Relationships
4. Medication Management
5. Patient Self-Management and Disease Management
6. Care Transitions
7. Telemonitoring
8. Immunizations

Spotlight on HHQI Campaign Supporters

“There’s no place like home” for Interim HealthCare
In The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy taps the heels of her ruby-red slippers together and utters the famous words, “There’s no place like home.” Thanks to her memorable scene, Interim HealthCare has launched the "Red Slipper Campaign," a national initiative to reduce avoidable acute care hospitalizations (ACH).

Interim HealthCare is a franchise home health organization with over 70 owners and 300 offices throughout the country. The Red Slipper Campaign is a national program developed by Interim’s corporate offices. Although it is a voluntary initiative for franchisees, Interim’s Pittsburgh office and its eight subsidiaries chose to participate and have received plenty of positive feedback from patients and staff alike. The interdisciplinary campaign is meant to reach everyone involved including patients, nurses, home health aides, physicians, etc., and is aimed at one goal: to reduce the ACH rate by striving to keep patients at home. Most patients would prefer to stay at home and through the campaign Interim staffers are doing their best to allow that to happen.

The Red Slipper Campaign has so far been successful in promoting reducing avoidable hospitalizations and improving patient satisfaction and clinical outcomes. Interim HealthCare, a corporate supporter of the HHQI National Campaign, believes that Dorothy had it right all along: there truly is “no place like home.”

Individuals and organizations that are not home health agencies can also register to participate in the HHQI National Campaign as Campaign Supporters. Examples of Campaign Supporters may include consultants, physicians, vendors, home health publications, individual home care staff members, or any other home health stakeholders. To sign up as a supporter visit the Campaign Supporters Registration page on the HHQI Web site.

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View the September Tips of the Week.
View the August Tips of the Week.
View the July Tips of the Week.

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