If you’re a home health provider, you know high levels of positive outcomes are more important than ever. The CMS Quality of Patient Care star rating and Patient Experience of Care star rating are powerfully persuasive when it comes time for prospective patients to find in-home care.
Is your company doing everything you can to improve your Home Health Compare outcomes scores? If there’s still room for improvement — and there always is — here are some tips that can help.
- Focus on staff training. If your staff receives proper, ongoing training on company procedures, best practices, and new ways to engage with patients, the investment can have a huge impact on your outcomes scores. Spell out everything they need to know, including agency policies and general care instructions, in a comprehensive professional caregiver handbook.
- Emphasize patient education. The cooperation of your patients is among the biggest factors in whether the patient will experience a positive outcome. Create an easy-to-follow care plan that incorporates detailed patient education and involvement. Integrate a condition-specific patient education guide as part of your program. Not only will your patients benefit, but the educational piece can help persuade referral sources to send their patients your way for their best chance for a positive outcome.
- Further help your patients understand their condition and communicate their daily progress with health log booklets. TAG Partners offers scorecard logs, health logs, blood pressure logs, glucose monitoring logs and pain and symptom logs.
- One more group of tools you can place at your patients’ disposal is Zone Flyers designed for their specific conditions. These provide at-a-glance guidance about whether symptoms being experienced are normal, warrant a call to their home health nurse, or need emergency attention.
When all of your efforts lead to CMS outcomes scores that you’re ready to highlight, call attention to them in eye-catching brochures that easily convey to referral sources how patients benefit from their experience under your care and exactly how your relevant outcomes scores compare to state or national averages.
For more information or to get started on creating your own materials, contact TAG Partners at 866-232-6477 or visit www.partnerwithtag.com.