LPN's In Home Health! How Many Visits and Pay???

Specialties Home Health

Updated:   Published

Okay, two things that I am looking at for when I graduate are LTC of course and Home Health. So I have questions for all of you Home Health nurses out there? Did any of you start HH, straight out of school? And is it really possible for me to expect to get on with a HH Agency right after school? I was thinking about working the weekend special at an LTC, and doing HH viits on Monday's to get my feet wet. That is unless I can get enough pts. and get paid enough to make more than I would at LTC, with HH. Okay now down to the nitty gritty. I am about to be a mother, and a wife, so of course I am concerned with my income. That is my sole reason for wanting to work. And second because I now that some area of nursing is my calling. The only reason my income comes first is because my family comes first, and they deserve the best. Anyway, when you first started HH, about how many patients did you have everyday? Are they the same patients? Are you guaranteed a certain amount of patients daily? How many days a week do you usually work, and what hours do you work? And lastly when first starting in HH with little or no experience, how much did you get paid per visit?

When I was working as a CNA a few months ago, one of the nurses that did PRN and I were talking. HH was her main job, and she did PRN as a favor to the ADON (we were always short, nurse and CNA's). Anyway she told me that she worked Monday - Thursday 8am-12pm, 20 patients a day, and $25 a visit. Do ya'll think that this is possible. When I was talking to another one of the nurses about it, he said that she probably didn't really have that many patients, and didn't make that much. At the time I though it was just jealousy rearing it's ugly head. But now I don't know. Ohh I should mention the nurse also told me that, most of her patiens lived in Nazzareth (a senior apartment community, everyone that lives there has to be independent). And all she had to do was vitals, and accu-checks. So like I said, what do ya'll think?

The nurse talking about hh probably meant 20 patients a week. With a hh visit you never know what you are walking into. Some days go as smooth as silk and other days you find that each patient has a problem requiring multiple phone calls, med changes, and interventions.

So is 20 patients a week the norm? And, with HH, do you have set hours, or do you just make your visits and that's it. I mean if you have 4 patients, and start visits at 8, and the visits don't require much and you are done by 11, is that all or are you still in someway on the clock?

Wondering again.

my personal opinion is that you should have at least 6 months of experience before you do HH, you are basically on your own in the field and must have a knowledge base to pull from, and be comfortable with skills and confident with your assessments, don't look at it as "i can be done by noon" some days every patient has a problem that you must work on, other days go smooth as silk

Specializes in Gerontology, Med surg, Home Health.

We're expected to see 5-6 patients in our 7 1/2 hour day. With all the charting necessary for home care, you'd never have time to see 20 patients in one day. I agree with the other posters. I can't imagine starting home care without at least 6 months experience. I was hired by a home health agency straight out of school ..about 2 weeks after I got my RN. I only had one patient for 8 hours so it wasn't hard. But the kind of home health I do now...you never know what's going to happen.

Specializes in Utilization Review.

Here's my take on this topic. Home care is a very independent area of nursing. You are out literally on your own on a daily basis assessing and teaching patients and their families and it takes a certain degree of ummm.... certainty.

LPN's in home care (atleast in my experience) perform revisits, including wound care, assessments and teaching. They don't perform the initial assessments or admit the pt to home care.

As for visits per day, I suppose 6-7 revisits in an 8 hr shift. The LPN where I worked saw up to 8 in a day, which I think is a lot.

Some places pay you per visit and others salary. It depends on you and what you feel you can handle. I personally prefer to be salaried because then I am not constantly keeping up with how many pts I need to see to be guaranteed a certain amount of money in my paycheck. If you know what I mean.

Check out salary.com. It is a very interesting way to see if you are being paid what you're worth.

i am a lpn in hh and i see about 15-20 patients a week. i get paid $21.00 per visit which can last 30 minutes to 45 minutes i am usually done by 2:00pm. plus i get paid for milage.

I'm an LPN in HH. I work salary for 24.70/hr 37.5 hours/week, plus mileage. My quota is set at 7 pts a day... sometimes I may have 8, which is too many, I think. Any pts seen outside of 8-4 hrs is at per diem rate which is about $26. Also have call times 1 week/month at a whopping $2/hr but rarely get called in. Am on call 1 weeked every eight weeks. I do revisits for general assessments, wound care, med teaching, IV treatments, etc. Most visits are 30-45 minutes but there are days when they are all 60 minutes or more, which is crazy and means your day will be much longer than 7.5 hours. There are also very good days when you are done by 2pm... which is especially nice on a Friday! I think it would be very hard to go into HH as a brand new LPN. I worked Med-Surg for 2 years, detox for 2 years... and was still overwhelmed at times by being the only eyes/ears out there with a pt. You have to be confident with really strong assessment skills. I've been in HH for 9 months now and I really love it.

Here's my ? - I've worked 6 mos. acute care med-surg and 15 months hospice care in private homes, ECF, and ALF's - considering HH lately- is that enough experience to be successful? Honest answers please!

lesrn2005

The 15 mos experience in hospice definitely is enough experience for another hospice job. Combined with the 6 mos acute care experience, there is no reason why you can't be successful in home health.

I was hired for my first home health position while I was still in school and after I was newly licensed as an LVN. I was hired for a specific case and received training for that case. I was lucky at the time, as the norm for home health agencies is to require a minimum of one year experience in acute care. However, since that first job, I have gone to agencies that will hire any person who is breathing and has an unencumbered license. Most of these agencies have predominantly LVNs as employees. The pay scale reflects the fact that their cases are LVN/LPN level care. They might pay RNs more in order to recruit and retain them, but have trouble finding RN level home care cases to keep them properly utilized. Only so many can be hired into RN supervisory positions.

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