The Ankota Healthcare Delivery Management Blog: Transition Home Program Differentiates Home Care Company
Transition Home Program: One key to successful growth in a home care business is to differentiate. We share other success factors in our free white paper, The 7 Habits of Highly Successful Home Care Agencies. In this blog, we often share success stories explaining how successful home care organizations differentiate their service. Today we talk about how you can differentiate by offering a care transition service.
Transition Home Program Differentiates Home Care Company
But rather than making a case for this on my own, allow me to share a success story from the Florida based home health care company, Paradise Home Health Care with offices in Palm Beach and Broward County. Paradise offers a program called Transitions to Home Care with the following services:
- Licensed Nurse meets with discharge planner/social worker and receives orders on day of discharge
- Licensed Nurse will transport client home and do a safety check
- Orders for new RX’s are dropped off and picked up by Licensed Nurse
- Licensed Nurse disposes of old or discontinued medications eliminating confusion
- Education of new and existing medication by the Licensed Nurse
- Medication set up weekly pillbox by Licensed Nurse to prevent miss doses or overdose
- Refrigerator checked for expired food
Here’s a case study from Paradise showing how their program benefited their client, family members, and their own company (who secured a home care engagement beyond the transition service):
Mrs. S is 92 years old living in Boynton Beach, Florida. She has some degree of memory impairment. She fell and fractured her hip. Prior to discharge from Rehab her son, a pilot and daughter in law, also a professional came in from Maryland to help Mrs. S. home. The discharge planner at Cornel Rehab Hospital knew about our “Transition to Home Program” and recommended Paradise Home Health Care to the family.
The son and his wife decided to use the program, so a licensed nurse met them at the Rehab and reviewed the medications and discharge plan with the Social Worker.
The son picked up the new medications while Mrs. S, her daughter in law and the nurse met back at the house. Our nurse proceeded to clear out expired medications from the kitchen and bathroom cabinets, again review the new medications, reconcile the new with the current prescriptions and once the son returned, did a medication pour into the weekly pill container. She also made a follow up appointment with Mrs. S.’s primary care doctor.
The following day, the daughter in law phoned to say “she didn’t have the words to express how grateful she and her husband are that they went with the Transition Home Program because even though she and her husband are intelligent people, they found the information overwhelming”. Then when they got to the house, they were surprised at how disoriented Mrs. S was. She had been away from home for about two weeks. They became so concerned about that, whatever they were told at the hospital was just a blur, and they forgot all the discharge information.
The nurse handled all of the medical concerns and went over again the medications, what to expect from Medicare home health and answered their questions.
They then hired a live in caregiver to stay with Mrs. S for the short term because they realized she was unsafe on her own. She still has live in care.
There was no unnecessary re-hospitalization, the family had a level of comfort knowing the medications were properly handled and they turned their attention and time to reorienting Mrs. S. back into her home and routine.
Paradise describes the benefits of their Transitions to Home program, as follows:
- Reduces or eliminates readmissions to the hospital or emergency room
- Medication compliance through education and management
- Reinforces the recommended care plan through education of client and caregiver
- Ensures a safe discharge home which is comforting for family members in or out of state
- Ensures follow-up appointments are made with respective physicians
- Helps alleviate the client’s anxiety of returning home.
If I needed care for my mom, I would choose Paradise as a result of this differentiated service.
