To all of you HH nurses out there

[Foxfour]

I was talking to a coworker yesterday. She mentioned that she's going to be opening a HH agency, and somehow the subject of me having a degree in health information management (one large aspect of the degree is inpt and outpt coding) and nursing came up. She jumped at my statement and said, "Do you want to be my DON?" I declined due to having no experience in HH. She said, "You can do it. It's just paper work." Am I wrong to think I can't take on a job like this or is she right in thinking I can? I have the confidence in my abilities to learn, but I also feel that a nurse can't go from one extreme to another without a smoother mode of transition in place. I guess what I am trying to say is I think I should go work as a HH nurse first. Do you agree, or am I just being paranoid? Thank you for the advice.

[renerian, BSN, RN]

UH I don't mean this to sound harsh but based on what your saying your friend has no clue what she is talking about. Yes home health is alot of paperwork/unless your lucky enough to have huge pockets to use a point of care system, but it is not JUST paperwork. I am glad you said no. Maybe you could be her IS person?

I hope she has deep pockets. Sorry if I sounded mean......

renerian

[Foxfour]

UH I don't mean this to sound harsh but based on what your saying your friend has no clue what she is talking about. Yes home health is alot of paperwork/unless your lucky enough to have huge pockets to use a point of care system, but it is not JUST paperwork. I am glad you said no. Maybe you could be her IS person?

I hope she has deep pockets. Sorry if I sounded mean......

renerian

No, you don't sound mean at all. I thank you for your honesty. I have one more question. What is a IS person?

[renerian, BSN, RN]

I am sorry I did not type it out. You could be her Information Systems staff member.

How is the situation going? I am suprised more home health nurses did not respond to this thread.

So many people jump into home health thinking it is a cake walk. It is not.

renerian

[DDRN4me]

i definitely think you need hh experience to be the DON...my former DON had her AD in nursing and a BS ion Business...and her lack of hh experience really showed at times!

[Claver]

As DON you definitely need to have some HH experience. The field is not an easy one to work or to manage. I worked with two agencies in HH but both of them were part of a larger organization. 1 was part of Health Insurance company, and the other was a large MRDD organization. Both of them were able to get referrals for their HH division so that we always had cases. For your self you need to understand the regs, compliance, medicare/medicaid reimbursements, oasis, admission, 60 days, readmission, discharge requirements etc. It can be done, but you should have some idea of how it is done.