questions about new HH job

KateRN1 · Aug 1, 2009

Trust your gut, always. But having said that, the number of visits per day can vary, especially for a per diem person who would probably be picking up visits for nurses who call off sick, who have a vacation day, or admits that no one has time for. Plus, the number of visits will vary anyway, even for the full-timers, depending on how many admits, recerts, discharges, and straight visits you have. Some weeks you do lots of admits and fewer straight visits, other weeks you may send someone to the hospital and recert them two days later, other times you may have nothing but straight visits, so it's hard to give a solid number. It's always feast-or-famine in home health.

Find out what the rate is for each: SOC (start of care aka admit), recert, discharge, and straight visit. A SOC should be close to double the straight visit rate. If you're doing infusion therapy or wound VACs, you should probably get a higher rate for those, too, depending on what it's like in your area.

If they're functioning as a staffing agency for flu shot clinics, then I can understand that the hourly rate for those will be different, depending on the contract. Some clinics pay more for RNs than LPNs, others pay the same no matter what.

A lot of agencies are doing away with mileage reimbursement these days (including mine) to cut down on costs. You should know upfront about this and don't agree to anything until you know. If you can itemize taxes at the end of the year, that will always work better to your advantage to claim your mileage at $0.505 per mile than the measly $0.28 or so that most agencies provide. If you don't itemize, though, take what they offer.

Most agencies will pay you a straight wage for your orientation time and they should tell you this upfront.

IMHO, the best way to find out what they're like it to find someone who works for them, but they probably won't give you an employee's phone number. You could always hang out in the parking lot and try to "bump into" someone

Good luck!

tabster224 · Aug 1, 2009

I work for a national agency. I have worked for them in 3 different states. It has varied state to state. I live and work in California now, and I get paid per visit, PPV. I get mileage, which they just changed how they were paying. They went to a mapquest system, so they pay automatically from office to first visit then to second and so on (they do this the first 3 days of the week you work, if you work anymore than 3 days, then you get paid from only the first to second visit, second to third and so on). I work 32 hours which works out to be 20-24 modified units (each visit type is given a number to corespond with modified units. a SOC/eval is 2 units, a Recert/ROC is 1.5 units, a normal visit RVS is 1). So to work 4 days a week I need to see at least 5 patients or 5 modified units a day.

We also get compensation for mileage, I think it is 40-42 cents, and we get paid for meetings/inservices and if we go to work in the office (if we do not have our modified units we can go in the office and work to make that up). We do not do staff relief, only visits.

I would certianly ask them what the rate of pay for hourly is and visit pay. Being noncomittal is not appropriate, and in my opinion a little fishy, like they have sometime to hide. Although some companies won't give out that info unless they know you are very interested, I still would not sign anything until I get written proof of what they pay for each thing. I would get in writing what they pay, for everything, each type of visit, SOC/eval/recert/ROC and RVS. Also if they are paid different amounts for different companies for flu clinic, I would at least get a range for hourly (such as $25-30 an hour for the flu clinics) Also get in writing mileage, and if you get compensation for travel time, charting time (be aware most companies include this in the visit pay, such as $55 for a RVS includes travel time between patients, charting time, and the visit time itself). I hope this helped. I reread this and it sounded ok, but I can be confusing sometimes lol.

caliotter3 · Aug 2, 2009

I have found that when there is a vague approach to questions about compensation, they expect to get you hired and working before you find out that they don't pay as well as their competition. What is even worse than this is when you are told one thing when you are hired and find something different on your paycheck. Don't feel shy about getting this info up front, in writing, if possible.

tabster224 · Aug 2, 2009

I have found that when there is a vague approach to questions about compensation, they expect to get you hired and working before you find out that they don't pay as well as their competition. What is even worse than this is when you are told one thing when you are hired and find something different on your paycheck. Don't feel shy about getting this info up front, in writing, if possible.

This is very true, which is why I said to get it in writing before signing anything. I would never go to work for an agency/company that will not spell things out up front and any reputable agency will put it in writing for you before you sign on to work for them. Never sign a contract that does not spell everything out (if it leaves room for intrepretation then don't sign, because they will use that to interpret it how ever they fill necessary at the time), including each type of visit pay, if you are salary, PPV or Per Diem, what is included in each visit, such as travel time, chart time, calling doctors, visit time, if you are required to do on call and what that consists of, how much reimbursement, how often you have to do on call, ect.

I agree with KateRN1, trust your gut and if you can't do that, never sign on the dotted line without everything on paper. In the last position, I had to refer back to my contract with them when they tried to pay me differently that what was in my contract.