Looking for a change

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Hello everyone. I've been a LPN for 15 years. 12 years ltc and 3 years private duty. I'm looking at getting out of ltc. I have offers for private duty and also for home health. Other than the obvious (seeing more than one client, drive time) what are the differences?

Essentially, in intermittent home health visits, you perform your task(s) for the day during the time of a set visit and get paid only the rate for that visit, while, as you know, you work an entire shift in extended care home health at an hourly rate of pay. You do not want to take two hours to perform a visit if you are only going to be paid for a portion of your time, typically what one would expect to receive for one hour. You have incentive to complete the visit in the least amount of time possible (within parameters) to maximize your productivity and pay.

Ok. So it's not hourly pay but you're paid a certain amount per visit. Is it different pay each house or is that set?

Usually it is a set rate per visit, that is, for regular visits. Some will pay more for more complex visits, or, for the RN doing visits, they get more for start of care visits, etc. As an LPN/LVN, you can expect your visit rate to range from $25 to $45 per visit for regular follow up visits, depending upon your area and your employer. An acquaintance of mine raked in the money at $35 per visit from a couple of agencies and $40 per visit from another when she used to average about 14 visits a day. I always suspected that she did some underhanded stuff though. She admitted to some visits taking five minutes, but you can not put on your paperwork that you were only in the home for five minutes!

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