RN South FL Home health question...

[roxystarfire]

I am planning to go to school soon to become a future RN and would like to know....

From those out there in the home health field what their jobs are like and.....

How is the salary in south Florida ?

I also plan to become an NP and wonder if part time school is even possible with this type of job?

I am a well organized independent person and feel this job would be perfect for me...however...I've read on some other forums that the pay is terrible and they overwork their nurses :'(....

Any experiences or advice out there would be nice :)

[Libby1987]

I can't speak for Florida as I'm in California, an affordable part of California. We're paying a grad nurse hourly and without overtime she's at $87,700/yr.

The jobs are very busy, it's about 50% patient care and 50% paperwork/calls/coordinating but the patient care is one-on-one and you don't end the day feeling like you didn't do enough for them. Sick of paperwork yes, but the patient care aspect is very satisfactory in general.

[roxystarfire]

Ok... I'm moving to California when I graduate and obtain my license thank you for the informative info. Always good to know for future moves.

I heard some of the home health nurses here are making McDonald wages $10-$13. I think they do have more medicare subscribers around here and perhaps that maybe partially the reason. Not sure :/

[Libby1987]

I live in a retirement area, i'm sure not like Florida and Arizona but still a relatively high percentage, our agency's wages are in line with other area hospital-based agencies

[Libby1987]

I think one of the reasons that home health wages can be low is that so many nurses think of it as "just home health", an easier lower grade of nursing versus a specialty and then take low offers. And of course the availability of nurses in a particular area, we don't have a huge amount to choose from.

[caliotter3]

Home health agencies in general have a tendency to use "reimbursement rates" as their justification for paying their external nursing employees as little as possible, no matter where the geographical location. There are a few agencies that pay well, typically those agencies will not be hurting for employees as people tend to gravitate toward employers that treat them well.

[Libby1987]

And nother thing I hear about on this forum, is the high frequency of simple visits. We don't do high-frequency for the sake of high frequency, perhaps our visits are more comprehensive and therefore we're paid higher to be cost-effective.