Home Health on TPAPN

texasgirl77 · Jun 14, 2010

Well nevermind my caseworker didn't think the job was appropriate! I'm pretty sure its because the home health agency never dealth with TPAPN and he wasn't familiar with the ins and outs. He thought alot of it fell onto me but it really doesn't it requires alot of an employer and someone new just doesn't want to do that. Maybe if I can find a job with someone familiar with peer assistance it will be better! Any ideas in the Houston area?

RNRutRO · Jun 17, 2010

Keep trying. Don't give up easily. Have you talked with your advocate to see if they can give you some ideas? It just depends where you interview and who you interview with. Do NOT, I repeat, NOT tell the "HR" person. Wait until you meet your manager and get a good feel for the job. No reason telling someone all your business if it's not the right job for you. Dialysis is a good place and I've heard Herman is tpapn friendly. Good luck. YOu CAN do it!!

Future NP., ADN, BSN, CNA, LVN · Aug 21, 2011

@texasgirl.. im a lvn and also in tpapn.. i work in home health but in the quality assurance dept. mon thru friday 8-5... ive been in the program for 17 and a half months.. 6 more months to go... just hang in their...

diva rn, BSN, RN · Aug 21, 2011

Florida's IPN does not allow HH in the field typically but will allow the QA job of course.

They will allow nights on a case by case basis if there is a supervisor in the house.

In my peer group there are 9 out of 12 of us working: here is the run down..maybe it will give you some ideas:

2 in case management

1 in QA for Home Health agency

2 in outpatient surgical centers

1 works at Cleveland Clinic Office for the Doctors

1 works at a Pediatricians office

1 in Fresnius dialysis

1 in Watershed (inpatient alcohol recovery)

and 3 are still looking...I know of 3 more nurses who are also working in CD/alcohol recovery..you must have 2 years of sobriety yourself before they will allow it, but the treatment centers are very IPN friendly..it takes one to know one..

I guess.

anyway, dialysis is also historically recovery friendly here in FL as well and many IPN nurses have started back via DaVita and Fresnius..

don't know if they are out there where you are...

good luck!

TMueller · Dec 5, 2011

Hello, I currently work Home Health and am in the monitoring program, initially they told me I could not work Home Care or night shift and unfortunately my full time job was Nights and my part-time job was with Home Care, with a lot of meeting and a great boss!! We came to an agreement that every morning when I came to the office (Home Care) I would take a breathalyzer and at the end of the day I would do this again. My boss was able to get the breathalyzer from a friend that works for the police dept and that is how I have started and ended my work days for the last 16 months. I am so great full that they allowed me to do this, otherwise I am not sure what I would have done. Good luck to you!!

Pitboss · Oct 31, 2016

Dialysis maybe?

catsmeow1972, BSN, RN · Aug 31, 2017

Waking up an older thread but reading through it did not quite answer my question. i am just a scoash (is that even a word?) past the 3 year mark, 709 days to go, of a 5 year contract, yeehah, downhill run. My issue was mental health although I've been put through the wringer of substance use disorder stuff. yeah that's been great for the brain health stuff, but anyway i digress.

i've had no notable problems except for the routine difficulty of getting a job. Sadly sometimes the jobs that us contract people can get are in crummy facilities that hire lots of contract people because no one else with any choice would go near them. i did nail down a job at a great facility that did not care about the contract. Unfortunately, i have discovered that i not a floor nurse. Just can't handle the stress.

Having decided that my days of hospital work are over (and after much thought and yes tears, i think i'm okay with that, mostly.) i would like to try my hand at private duty/home health. It sounds very appealing to me. i would be able to concentrate on one patient at a time without getting pulled in 18 directions at once. i live in an area where home health companies abound. It's very snowbird heavy and quite affluent.

Supposedly, the contract will clear me to do home health soon (they review for something they call "transitional monitoring" at the 3 year mark where supposedly they lift the employment restrictions.) I say "supposedly" because no one is really forthcoming about what transitional monitoring actually means. So much of this stuff is left open to interpretation depending on who your case manager is and the direction of the wind.

My concern is that i don't know how difficult it will be to get a HH position even without employment restrictions. I am guessing those reports from the employer still have to be turned in so you still have to discuss the issue with said employer. Once again, i am stuck wondering. I would like to know because if getting HH is going to be a near impossibility then i need to turn my attention elsewhere.

Does anyone out there have recent experience in getting into HH with a contract, even one that is closer to the end the beginning?

Recovering_RN · Sep 1, 2017

I did home health for 8 months at the beginning of my 3 year contract. I didn't love it, but it was a job, and I do know other nurses who do love it so it's worth looking into. For the contract restrictions, I was still on a narc restriction but that didn't really matter because we never administered meds to the patients. The home health nurse was really doing just a weekly checkup on our patients, plus occasionally wound care. No meds. They took their meds on their own or had a caregiver. Some patients did need for me to fill their weekly pill boxes, so they just didn't give me patients who are on any narcs. It wasn't hard to do, there were very few patients on narcs anyway.

As far as the supervision that is required for most monitoring contracts, mine (TPAPN in Texas) required that I check in and check out with my manager every day. One of those could be by phone, the other had to be in person. My manager also assigned 3 other people who were allowed to be my "check in" people since she was not always available in the office or on the phone. The in person check in/out was literally me walking in the door of the office, saying "hey, I'm checking in (out)" and leaving. I wasn't allowed to see patients before I had done the check in, or after the check out.

There really isn't much to the home health visits. Truthfully it was just going in, doing a set of vitals, talking to them about whatever topic related to their main health problem (because you always had to document that you had done some type of teaching, like on meds, diet, nutrition etc) and then leaving and finishing up the paperwork in the car. The paperwork is much more time consuming than the actual visits! Especially on new patients.

The only stressful part about home health for me was calling the doctor's offices. It's hard to talk to a doctor at all, usually you leave a message, and then their nurse calls you back later with the doctor's answer. They rarely leave voicemails, so you really have to answer when they call back, and I don't like to answer calls while I'm driving. I get too distracted. So I tended to make all my visits in the morning so I could get all my phone calls done in the afternoons, with hopefully the doctor's offices finally calling back by the end of the day.

A minor issue I had with home health, and this was totally my ego talking, was that I felt like the check in and check out process was a constant reminder that I was in TPAPN. Twice every day I had to say "hey look, I'm not high". I lived pretty far away from my agency, but my patients were close to my house, so the drive into the office for the in person check in/out was always annoying to me. Knowing I could've driven a few miles to each of my patients and then gone home if I wasn't in TPAPN, but since I was, I had to add the extra twenty five minutes of driving to go to the office. But I was lucky that the agency agreed to do those check ins! I knew that, so I tried to feel gratitude rather than annoyance.

Oh, and the check in and out log was written down by the agency and I faxed it into my case manager quarterly along with my quarterly status updates.

Lhalty · Sep 1, 2017

This post is few years old

catsmeow1972, BSN, RN · Sep 1, 2017

Seen and noted. Hence the opened term "waking up an old thread"......8 )

catsmeow1972, BSN, RN · Sep 1, 2017

I think the "let's make sure you don't forget that you screwed up," even if what got you here wasn't a "screw up" yanks my chain. My last position was such that the contract business was between me and my manager and nobody else's business. It took several months but it was nice when i was finally able to make it through a shift without feeling like I had IPN tattooed on my forehead and "it was obvious to everyone". It wasn't. In a reasonable setting, nobody knows or cares.

The seemingly random interpretation of the stipulations of these things confuses the heck out of me.

I think (hope) getting an okay for HH from IPN will be the easy part. My worry is in convincing the agencies that there is nothing to worry about any more than with any other nurse. I dread going through the whole explaining of what IPN is and why blah blah blah......again. I've never thought that field dressing myself out on the carpet for a job is terribly appropriate.

ICURN1126 · Oct 25, 2017

I am in the DFW area. Does anyone mind sending me a PM with some of the home health companies that are TPAPN friendly? Thank you so much!