Master the Home Care Compliance Strategies You Need Today!
August 28, 2025
Mastering regulatory requirements in home care, home health, and hospice is no simple feat. To maintain compliance, your businesses must actively identify relevant regulations, assess current compliance, develop a compliance plan, implement and monitor it, and continuously improve efforts to maintain it. This involves staying informed about changes, providing employee training, conducting regular audits, and documenting procedures. Any findings that indicate noncompliance with rules and regulations should automatically become part of your QI problems and solutions.
Here is a more detailed breakdown:
1. Identify and Understand Relevant Regulations:
- Know your industry: Different industries have specific regulations (e.g., healthcare, home health, and hospice).
- Identify applicable laws and standards: Review government websites, industry associations, and consult with legal experts when needed.
- Understand the specifics: Go beyond just knowing the regulation exists; understand the specific requirements that apply to your agency.
2. Assess your Current Compliance position:
- Regularly Conduct Internal Audits:
- Be sure to regularly access the state rules for any relevant changes, at a minimum of yearly.
- Conduct a thorough assessment of your current policies, procedures, systems and complaint logs to identify gaps in compliance.
- Risk Assessment
- At least yearly, identify potential compliance risks and prioritize them based on severity and likelihood of occurrence.
- Develop a plan for correction of those issues and be sure to notify all staff who will be affected by any changes. Document all the work done and who was notified.
- Ensure your documentation (policies, procedures, training materials) is up-to-date and accurate.
3. Develop and Implement a Compliance Plan:
- Create a compliance roadmap:
- Outline specific steps, timelines, and responsibilities for achieving compliance.
- Be sure to assign a specific position the responsibility of monitoring compliance. The old rule “if everyone is responsible, no one is really responsible” is a very true statement.
- Establish clear policies and procedures:
- Develop written policies and procedures for all areas of compliance.
- Develop the steps for each area of compliance with quarterly reports of actions and outcomes.
- Implement controls:
- Implement controls (e.g., access controls, monitoring systems) to prevent non-compliance.
- Provide employee training:
- Ensure employees understand relevant regulations and their roles in maintaining compliance.
- Incorporate the training into orientation and at least yearly reminders at Inservice training of the critical areas of regulations and practices, e.g., handwashing in the homes, when and how.
4. Monitor and Maintain Compliance:
- Regular audits:
- As referenced, quarterly reporting and actions and outcomes for ongoing compliance are necessary to make regular auditing valuable and to initiate real compliance changes.
- Ongoing monitoring:
- Use automated tools or other methods to monitor compliance in real-time.
- Use phone logs and complaint logs to identify potential compliance issues.
- Again, be sure to assign a specific position to the monitoring process to assure it reviewed and reported on a regular basis.
- Continuous improvement:
- Remember, regularly review and update your compliance plan and procedures to adapt to changing regulations and agency needs.
- Documentation:
- Maintain detailed records of compliance activities, audits, and training.
- Establish a site where all documentation can be found.
- Seek expert advice:
- Consult with industry consultants or legal counsel for guidance on complex regulatory issues.
5. Utilize Technology:
- Compliance management software:
- Consider using specialized software to automate tasks, track compliance status, and manage documentation.
- Risk assessment tools:
- Use tools to assess and prioritize compliance risks.
- Training platforms:
- Utilize platforms to deliver and track employee training on compliance.
By implementing these steps, agencies can proactively manage their regulatory compliance, minimize risks, and avoid complaints to governing bodies, potential penalties, and legal issues.
If you are unsure on how to proceed with developing and maintaining an effective compliance program, contact Kenyon HomeCare Consulting at kenyonhcc.com or call 206- 721-5091. We are here to help!
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HOPE Question and Answer Repository
Today, this article will look at little different than out typical articles. We all know the costs of losing employees and trying to hire and train new ones. It is exhausting and expensive. So, we think about our wages and benefit packages all the time. What can we do differently that makes people stay? We can’t change the job and we don’t want to keep people that don’t like the work itself. So, how do we acknowledge employees in a way that is valuable to them and that our businesses can afford to do? 5 Things To Consider About Employee Recognition At Your Christmas Party: 1. Years of Service: These can be based on milestone work anniversaries (5, 10, 15 yrs, etc.). If a person has been at your agency 11 years, you pull them up and acknowledge them in the group of employees who have been there at least 10 years up until the time they hit the 15 years landmark. This way longevity is recognized yearly. 2. Special Employee awards: Now, this may be difficult if your staff is very small, but acknowledge the employee who has gone the extra mile in the job they do. Tell the story. The employee needs to know when the employer is proud of the work that has been done. Consider a plaque or certificate. Don’t minimize the value of the employee having them to display. 3. Acknowledge all employees in the mix: Because we are a clinical industry, the administrative staff is often overlooked on day-to-day operations. Ultimately, don’t miss the chance to acknowledge the employee who was able to catch billing errors or collect on a large account. Staff doesn’t like to hear about money, but those types of collections keep Christmas bonuses in place! So, make sure the other staff knows the accomplishments of the finance department or the office manager that every caller loves to speak to. Don't ever forget the IT staff that is on call more than any clinical person in your agency! 4. Letters from the administration: Add a personal note to your staff either collectively or individually depending on the size of your agency. If you are larger, there are employees you don’t often see or get to talk to on a regular basis, so take the time so send a note with that Christmas bonus. 5. Consider the Christmas bonus: Listen, some of you can afford to do substantial monetary bonuses and that is fantastic. However, if you are not in that position, consider something in its place. Maybe small gas cards go with the letter from administration. With the cost of groceries, consider something that helps with the costs of daily living for employees. Big box gift cards in your area will always be used. You may do a lot of these things on a yearly basis to employees. All this being said, it doesn’t mean there aren’t reasons for acknowledgement throughout the year. However, your annual Christmas party is a good way to do it collectively. Between your annual party, write the individual cards to employees when you hear a patient interaction worthy of praise. Or, maybe you buy a gas card for the employee who has picked up extra shifts and always shows up on time. Ultimately, employees will feel valued. You will not regret the time, effort, and energy put into these efforts. Merry Christmas! If you want help with recruitment and retention strategies for your agency, please call Kenyon Homecare Consulting at 206-721-5091 or contact us online today.
When you think in practical terms, what does your ICD 10 coding mean to the clinicians in your agency? It probably isn't as important as you would like. Realistically, your nursing staff cares about hands on patient care. If you want the code itself to be more meaningful, then you need to attach the concepts of patient care to the ICD coding. You may think the code itself goes hand-in-hand with the care, but this is not always true. As a clinician, there are concepts within the nursing care plan that are automatic and some that are instinctual based upon the body system causing the need for care. It's a given that medication, diet, and disease process teaching are going to be in the care plan (or should be). When you get to disease process, our experience shows the clinician doesn't always run deep into the specifics of the disease when it could lead to valuable interventions being included in care. For example, when clinicians do a care plan related to cardiac disease, are the interventions very broad to include all things related to any type of cardiac disease? If you have a patient with right sided heart failure versus left sided heart failure, how many nurses would assess the patient differently? Would your nurses change the frame of mind to look for distended neck veins or anorexia and nausea if the patient had right sided failure? Would they be in the head space of considering whether the patient's appetite changes are more about just having been in the hospital than about potential venous stasis in the abdomen? The point is that although there are certain interventions that would be the same regardless the type of heart failure, picking up on different symptoms and critically thinking through the cause is often missing in the hustle and bustle of the day-to-day. This is not a judgment on the capabilities of the nurses but more about how our nurses are trained to consider care planning and assessment. We have people for ICD 10 coding now. Most nurses are not in the ICD coding manual looking up their own codes anymore because of the specificity that wasn't the same 25 years ago. So, the nurses go out with an H&P from the hospital or doctors office and develop a care plan. It isn't necessarily with the coding in mind. So, we need to get back to basics when it comes to coding and clinical care. We need to train out staff to look harder at the coding. Our coding departments need to have open communication with clinicians and understand the concepts of care planning to understand if things are missing in the care plans. What about your clinical manager's role? Are these things considered when reviewing care plans? What about your record review process? Are your ICD 10 coders nurses that understand care planning and is it part of the coding process to review the care plan? These are things to consider when you look at your clinical practice as well as your coding solution. At Kenyon Homecare Consulting , we have a comprehensive ICD 10 coding department that can provide education to clinicians, accurate ICD 10 coding, care plan and Oasis review. Call us at 206-721-5091 or contact us online to see if we can help you merge the code with the clinical practice in a way to improve your outcomes and your bottom line. We will offer 5 free recodes to any agency that would like us to check the efficacy of their current coding system or talk about becoming your coding solution.