How Are You Doing With Chronic Disease Education Today? Do Your Outcomes Say Otherwise?

Chronic disease management is something that is so vital to patient outcomes and efficient patient care, but it is often put on the back burner of day-to-day operations. So ask yourself why you haven’t invested in keeping chronic disease education on the forefront of your plan. Is it financial? Is it because you don’t have the staff to pull from the field? If it hasn’t been something you have thought about in a long time, then it’s time to revisit your plan.

Why Chronic Disease Education?

It is a well-known concept that when you put the clinical emphasis on something, it improve for a period of time. For instance, have you taken a routine approach to Oasis education at some point in the past? Did you notice an improvement in accurate Oasis scoring? When our staff is engaged with routine education, the topic becomes forefront in routine practice. So, it only makes sense to make chronic disease education an important investment in your agency. Now, let’s take a look at things to consider when choosing your chronic disease education platform.

1.    Online or In-person: For those agencies large enough with decent-sized education budgets, you may have your own education department. This makes in-person lecture style teaching work for your agency. If you don’t have your own in-house education department, then online is the more affordable and easily accessible option. Either way, you have to find the best fit for your agency.

2.    Comprehensive Teaching: Chronic disease education is a huge topic. You have to consider the disease process, care-planning, care coordination, and discipline specific care.

3.    Discipline Specific Education: Chronic disease education isn’t a nurse only thing. It needs to include therapy disciplines and home health aide staff. Our aides are so often underutilized and they can be such an integral part of chronic disease management.

4.    Ongoing Process: This can’t be a one-and-done kind of teaching. You have to make it consistent to stick just like anything else you want to implement in your agency. Hone in on certain disease processes one at a time. Then, what changes in the care plan depending upon how long the patient has had the diagnosis? Work with staff on realistic care plans. Are you going to suddenly make the 45 year smoker quit? If not, then maybe you need to work in other areas that you can improve quality of life for the patient. The care plans need to be patient specific and not cookie cutter for a particular diagnosis.

5.    Operational Changes: Once you have completed the education to staff, then you need to move to how it will change the way the clinician practices in regards to work flow. You need to have a plan in place to change the way staff execute the care plan. You should see an increase in care coordination that is meaningful and patient specific. If you just provide the education and no way for the clinical staff to put it into practice, the dollars you have invested will be lost.

Kenyon Homecare Consulting Can Help:

At Kenyon Homecare Consulting , we have comprehensive educational platforms to help your homecare staff make a difference in chronic disease management. Give us a call today at 206-721-5091 or contact us online to see how we can help you become the experts in chronic disease care.