Rehospitalization Outcomes: Are They Improved With Advanced Education?
Kenyon HomeCare Consulting • March 15, 2021
As part of the healthcare profession, most likely you are aware of measuring rehospitalization outcomes as a result of the relatively new Medicare rehospitalization guidelines. But maybe you don’t quite understand what those guidelines are, how they affect your organization, or why you should pay close attention to them. And if your rehospitalization outcomes need improvement, how do you make these changes?
Rehospitalization Outcomes and Medicare: Why it Matters
Medicare is tightening its leash on reimbursements for hospital stays, rehab and home health and hospice episodes. Consequently, knowing your rehospitalization rates, the rates of your hospital partners and making their prevention a top priority is essential.
The Effect on Hospitals
What’s all the buzz about surrounding hospital readmissions? According to CMS, unacceptable readmissions with the same diagnosis occur thirty days or less from a patient’s discharge. To give you an idea of the scale of this issue, fewer than 800 hospitals—out of a total of 3,400 subject to the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program—met Medicare’s requirements to avoid penalties in fiscal 2015. As for the others not meeting the requirements? They are suffering from up to a three percent cut in reimbursements from Medicare.
The Effect on Home Health and Hospice
The fallout doesn’t stop with hospitals, and they aren’t the only healthcare organizations required to measure their hospital/rehospitalization outcomes. Reporting specific outcomes is required if you run a home health or hospice agency.
How do these outcomes affect your bottom line? If the rehospitalization outcomes you report are consistently poor—or if you fail to report required outcomes to CMS—then your reimbursement rates for the following fiscal year are lowered. For home health organizations, these outcomes include emergency room visits as well as acute hospitalizations.
Additionally, the home health, hospital and SNF outcomes reported to CMS currently are posted online for consumers to view. Plans are in the works to have Hospice Compare results online in the spring/summer of 2017. As a result, any potential clients, their families and medical professionals can search your outcomes. Then, using this outcome information, they determine whether or not to choose your agency to provide client care. If your outcomes aren’t considered acceptable, you may lose business.
The Effect on Clients
Needless to say, all private pay and Medicare clients want to remain in their homes. This is one of the primary reasons homecare services are retained. Trips to the emergency room and hospitalizations disrupt lives, making clients frustrated with the level of care they’re receiving from your organization.
Addressing the Issue of Rehospitalization Outcomes: Education for Aides
Although preventing hospitalizations seems daunting, negative rehospitalization outcomes can be easily overcome. Homecare agencies can provide the best care possible for clients, secure their reputation within the community, and ensure good relationships with referral sources by providing advanced chronic disease education for aides.
Chronic disease education gives aides the knowledge and experience they need to provide top-notch care to clients suffering from long-term conditions. Often these elderly clients are not able to do the basic tasks necessary for improving their quality of life—such as managing multiple medications, maintaining personal hygiene, and preparing healthy meals.
Therefore,with advanced chronic disease education, aides are able to help you improve rehospitalization outcomes by:
Understanding how to care for clients after they leave the hospital;
Knowing the warning signs of condition deterioration;
Having knowledge of common symptoms of various chronic diseases;
Comprehending when to call for help.
Working with Kenyon HomeCare Consulting
Kenyon HomeCare Consulting’s Aide University provides students with the tools necessary to improve your rehospitalization outcomes. Reach out to us to learn more.
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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.