KristenRN

Hello to all. Maybe this is a naive question, and I apologize if so! I'm an RN employed part-time in the ICU of a local hospital. I've been approached in the last few weeks about doing private pay/private duty homecare when their family member comes home. I'm interested in doing this. The family is well off financially, and would love to have a 24 hour pvt duty nurse, which I won't do. But if they want someone to come out a couple of times a week to do a good head to toe assessment of their grandma and follow overall progress as she heals from her surgery and recovers from her stroke, that seems like it would be ok. They will likely have insurance paid home health, but I doubt this lady is going to have skilled needs for very long. Her primary caretaker has already been caring for her PEG tube, and while the pt is in the hospital, they have started trache and ostomy teaching. I work part-time by choice, and will not be leaving my hospital job to do private duty. I have almost 7 years of home health experience, both as an LPN and as an RN/case manager. I enjoyed HH very much but NOT the on call, weekends/holidays, etc...and I'm not an evening/night person at all. I also have almost 9 years of ICU/CCU experience, and had a brief stint with med-surg and nursing home stuff way back when I first graduated. I called NSO this morning, and they said all I have to do is add a "self-employed" clause to my policy. If I later decide to incorporate, then I'd need to have a business policy. The cost is the same for the highest amount of coverage an RN in this state (Maryland) can have, which I already had anyway. I'm having a hard time seeing the value of S-corp or LLC right now for what I'm considering doing. If I have a payment arrangement with the family, a doc to call PRN, and I have malpractice that covers me in the situation, isn't that enough? Is all of this contract stuff necessary? I don't at this time need my private duty stuff to be anything other than self supporting. I don't plan to hire employees or contract myself out to hospitals, and as long as my side business is supporting itself, that's fine. If I make a little extra money, that's great. If this works out, I have already spoken to one of the two surgeons who did this patient's surgery about the possibility of seeing other patients on a private pay basis for them, and he was all for the idea. Any thoughts on this arrangement? Is there a benefit to incorporating? Can I just use QuickBooks or something like that to keep track of what I'm paid and report that as income at the end of the year? I'm already on my husband's insurance (he's active duty military) and on the no-benefits option at my hospital. Thanks for the thoughts.

I am not a CRNA, just a regular ICU RN but I also carry malpractice over and above what my hospital provides. Someone mentioned in a post something about what the employer/group providing should be sufficient......I had a nursing instrcutor from many moons ago suggest that you should always carry your own insurance because then you have some say in the outcome of any case against you....for example, it might be in the hospital's best interest to settle a claim to avoid bad publicity. The hospital does not need your consent to do this, even if you don't believe the case against you, but you would then be left with the black mark of having a claim against you settled. If you have your own insurance, you have someone representing YOUR best interests, and who is obviously NOT going to want to just settle a claim to avoid publicity. There is the fact that having your own policy does make you a "deeper pocket". But I don't believe just having more insurance makes you more liable to be sued. The hospital doesn't remove you from their policy just because you carry your own, but my hospital did insist on knowing if you have your own policy in addition to theirs.