How do you do it? Pt satisfaction and ease of scheduling visits?

Re: the scheduling of visits. Don't give them that much of a choice. We (RN visit staff) schedule all our own visits, we know our schedules and patients have limited choices. These are the times I have available, take your pick. Someone has to have the 8am visit. For most of my patients, that's the coveted visit though. We don't have LPNs do visits in my program because they can't push chemo or do a lot of the other things our visits entail. Many of our patients are not seen once/week because they don't need to be seen that frequently so we don't have these issues.

Agree with Kel above. Don't give the patients so much of a range. Give the patient a choice, morning or afternoon? 8 am to 10 am or 10 am to noon?

In our agency RN sees the patient every 2 weeks if they have wound, a bath aide, or something complicated. Otherwise LPNs do the weekly care.

We increase communication via email, a bimonthly meeting with the DON, and a weekly all staff meeting. It's still not a perfect world, but we work at it.

make your schedule and map your pts out in the order you will travel. then call and be direct... tell them an approx time you will be in their area (with a 1-2 hr window) and that they are scheduled for a visit. most will grumble about any time you give them, but don't budge (unless they have md appt). Occasionally I will have a pt give me a hard time, and I tell them very kindly, sorry thats the only time i will be in that area. worse case scenario, they don't get a visit that week.

text worke best for most. had a supervisor who used to fill out slips on anything the nurse failed to communicate and gave them to us. at one point, communication sucked so bad, we were required to call the office after every visit and give a report to the cm or supervisor. that got old really fast.