Admission Paperwork

[DrewRN28]

I was wondering if anyone knew the legal background on admitting a patient to home services. I was informed by some members in my company that missing discharge paperwork from their recent hospital stay, does not exclude an RN from performing an admission or resumption of care. Isn't this an unsafe means of practice? I can't find any documentation supporting this but curious on the ethics? Thanks for any thoughts!

[Emm_RN, ASN, BSN, MSN]

Hi, I am an admissions nurse for my home health agency. I have recently run into several patients with missing d/c paperwork. Yes, you can still admit a patient or do a ROC. It does feel strange to do, however patients often misplace or lose their paperwork, and not all d/c paperwork gets uploaded electronically to our system. What I do in these situations (and it can be a pain) is I get ahold of the MD office who will be signing their home care orders and I verbally obtain all orders if they are not uploaded in their profile. It can be very time consuming if they have multiple doctors with multiple specialties. The time this gets messy is if you cannot get ahold of anyone in the doctor's office. In this case, I would recommend calling into your office/branch to see if they have any documentation/referral notes or if they can get ahold of the doctor. Home Health nursing has made seeing discharge paperwork the most exciting thing!