How Healthcare Reform Can Help You Optimize Your Business
Posted by Cheri Whalen on Thu, Dec 03, 2009 @ 01:27 PM
Healthcare Reform may be the new word on the streets, but what SHOULD it mean for Home Health and Hospice agencies?
The House and the Senate have passed bills regarding healthcare reform and will be working together to create a unified piece of legislation that will affect providers in the coming months. Ultimately, it still remains there are changes on the horizon that can be viewed as bad and harmful OR can be used to the benefit of the patient and the agency to provide exceptional care. Agencies need to ask themselves: "Do I want to be a healthcare provider that STRIVES for more or one that is merely surviving?"
Changes happening now in the Home Health and Hospice industry are ones many providers embraced before the regulation was provided. Measuring outcomes, comprehensive assessments including fall risk assessments and depression, bereavement services, pain management monitoring ... have long been quantifiable measurements any agency can use to determine the quality of their services and the satisfaction of their patients. Now that these are required to do business with Medicare, some agencies find themselves asking "What do I have to measure?" when the real question should be "What SHOULD I be measuring?".
Looking beyond the le
tter of the regulation will be imperative for agencies who wish to STRIVE for more. Are there areas in your business you feel are lacking? What are you doing to measure the success or failure of those areas? Have you asked those employees responsible for that area what they feel is lacking and provide suggestions for improvement? Is that improvement measurable? Don't just wait for the new Home Health Compare, CAHPS survey, or Hospice Patient Satisfaction scores to tell you where your business needs work.
The software used in your agency today may provide reports you can use to help get started. There might not be one single report that encompasses all your needs, but you may have multiple reports that can be used in conjunction with each other to give a fuller picture. I encourage you to review each of the reports you have available and determine how they can help you measure the success of your efforts!