Specialties Home Health
Published Jul 24, 2003
jfpruitt
205 Posts
I'm a new grad and home health RN, so bare with me and all my questions. Hopefully, most of the nurses here are not in it for the money, haha, but I had a question about home health. I'm a newly hired home health RN and was thinking that HH could become a very lucrative specialty of nursing for me. I'm getting paid $30/visit and most of my visits rarely last 1 hour in my area because it is a very small town and I'm only driving 5-15 minutes between patients. Even all the paperwork involved combined is not lasting much over 1 hour. I know that there will be slower times and it will take longer per visit with complicated patients, but it would seem if I start doing this full time seeing 7 or 8 patients per day how I could soon be making alot more money than a regular floor nurse. Am I just new and nieve or is this true of home health or maybe I'm just lucky to find something in a small area where I'm not driving so much and can see more pt's? I'm just at a loss. Thanks in advance for your info/comments....
sb22
52 Posts
I know a nurse who reportedly made $100,000/year doing home health visits. She had a bad reputation in the community, though. She worked for 3 agencies at the same time so noone really knew how many visits she was doing. I didn't like following her or filling in for her because the patients felt like they had been cheated and her work was messy.
I have made some very quick visits and have seen as many as 12 patients in one day (I made up for it that night doing paperwork, though).
I love home health and do it for reasons other than money, but it can be an easy way to make some extra $$ without killing yourself working on the floor at a hospital.
renerian, BSN, RN
5,693 Posts
Last year I did case management/patient care in home health. My wage per week was between 8.00 to 11.00 per hour. Sucked. The travel time was what was hurting me as I was going far apart but no travel compensation other than mileage. I would sometimes have 4 to 5 hours in a visit with the travel time and visit and would only get 25.00 so you can see how rotten the pay was. Depends on your service area.
renerian
Plus I forgot to say I bought a new car every other year as I put 30,000 miles or more per year on my car.