How Home Health Providers Are Training Staff to Improve Patient Survey Scores

Home Health Care News | By Patrick Filbin
 
With a number of home health regulatory changes coming once the calendar flips to 2023, agencies are focusing on getting a head start adjusting their staff to changes.
 
Many leaders consider major regulatory shifts as an issue that needs to be dealt with from the top, down. But that’s not necessarily the case.
 
The Home Health Value-Based Purchasing (HHVBP) Model, for example, will be implemented on Jan. 1 of 2023.
 
That happens to be the same date when OASIS-E will finally be implemented as well.
 
Arming staff with the ability to deal with these changes is as important – if not more – than leaders’ ability to adapt themselves.
 
“Our staff has really emphasized that our ultimate goal with value-based purchasing is to continue to keep providing the best possible care for our patients,” Cheryl Foster, director of home health at North Kansas City Hospital, told Home Health Care News. “The biggest challenge, I think for a lot of people, is the cost of getting the staff and educating the staff on these changes.”
 
Foster has been in the home health industry for about 30 years and management for a majority of that time. North Kansas City Hospital’s home health arm has a patient census of about 350 and up to 85 full- and part-time employees.
 
The ultimate goal, of course, is for the home health division to continue to provide the best possible care for its patients under HHVBP.
 
“That needs to really be our focus,” she said. ”We’re going to look at the different things that roll into value-based purchasing, but the reason we’re looking at them is because we want to provide better care for our patients and better outcomes.”
 
However, reaching that goal will prove difficult for several reasons.
  
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