becca-roo

Hello everyone! :uhoh21: Hoping to hear input regarding REMICADE IV therapy in home health setting. Are other agencies administering this? What literature I've read on this states it is administered in doctor's offices or clinical settings--not a lone home health nurse in the boonedocks all by her lonesome never having administered it before...the warnings/possible side effects scare me. Must we weigh (on unreliable scales) and figure the dosages ourselves? I do not feel comfortable with this and fear management is piling on too much liability on my already weary shoulders. And another thing---I thought blood products were not allowed to be administered in home health setting and I feel uncomfortable about administering immunoglobulins. Any input on this? Is there some sort of guidelines or a list of procedures that ARE NOT allowed to be performed in a home health setting? Any and all input would be greatly appreciated!

I refer to Outcome results from OASIS data collection that compare agencies...do the freq of visits have any bearing on these instances?

Are the amount of agency visits/freq figured into how Medicare figures and reports their Outcomes? Is there somewhere on the web I can go to see just how they arrive at their statisics?

they are looking at reducing our on-call pay to save money since we are a non-profit organization that is operating in the red. i'm curious as to how other agencies pay employees for being on-call. i have almost 13 years home health experience and my starting hourly wage (as a senior nurse) is 15.50. needless to say, i signed on for the benefits. now they want to take some benefits away. we take call for 24/7, a week at a time. we get paid for 8.5 hours and get a 7.5 hour day off with pay. that figures up to me making $248 for being on-call. care to share with me what your agency does?

Agency is looking to cut expenses and scrutinizing our On-Call pay. Meanwhile, our main Physical Therapist (and PTA's under her employ) is contracted (paid per visit) and recommends a frequency of 3xweek x9weeks on every referral/diagnosis PT evaluates. I'm new with a non-profit agency and not up with the office politics...but it seems to me that PT is getting a heaping helping of our PPS pie. I'm wondering what PT frequencies other agencies have. Shouldn't they be instructing the patient and caregiver on their HomeExercisePrograms and getting out ASAP? I've worked for other agencies where it was more the norm for PT to be in and out in under 10 visits to where we couldn't get the extra $$$....and now to see PT go 27visits for each Recert period?!? I'm curious too about wether or not therapists do OASIS at other facilities...ours doesn't.