New Home Health Assessment NP

Specialties Home Health

Published

I recently joined a company (third party) that sends out NP contractors to patient's homes in NYC to perform risk adjustment assessments on behalf of patient's insurance health plans. I had my first day this week (woo!). It was a little rocky at first because I just had to get used to all of the system requirements and navigating that in the field was sort of difficult. The assessment piece was easy BUT I did undergo lots of complaining from the patient and long-winded responses to each question asked (which there are a lot that if positive can open up a can of worms). The company really did not go over infection control in the homes which I had to learn on my own... (ie. bag technique).

As I go through the process, I am learning what is needed to make this process more efficient as I am only paid per visit (the first visit for me took 1.5 hours which it should have only taken 1 hour but with the patient's long-winded answers and IT logistical issues compounded with it being DAY 1 prolonged the visit).

Two questions that I had were:

  • What question do you ask on the confirmation call other than (ensuring patient takes out medication bottles/tubes, PCP and specialist information, pharmacy information, paperwork from hospital and/r doctor, scale to measure weight, immunization status, confirmation of demographics, if someone else will be present for the visit, and if they live alone or with a roommate)?
  • What patient educational information do you provide the patient? I was thinking of creating just a simple "follow up plan" doc on MW word that I can write out the plan at the visit so they have some thing tangible to hold on to and bring to their PCP. Any templates that you have?

Thanks all!

EmpoweredNP

As a home health RN the one other thing I ask before showing up is if they own any dogs, my company would then ask that they be contained in another room while we are visiting. For educational materials my company has packets for certain conditions, like diabetes or CHF, with information on management. It would be helpful to have printouts for cardiac, renal, diabetic dietary guidelines.

Thank you so much! I didn't even think of animals. Also I'll ask my company about printouts, great idea, thank you.

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