Millions of older Americans have HHAs, providing teams of clinicians into their homes on a daily basis to assist with essential medical services and help them stay out of hospitals along with staying connected in their communities. We believe that expanding the skill sets of our nation’s HHAs is one of the keys to helping America’s growing population of seniors, age in place successfully. Since HHAs are in their clients’ homes for multiple hours each day, they can play a critical role in protecting clients’ health. It is essential that the clinicians are provided with right platforms and tools.
As patient care has evolved into a system with multiple providers, the role of a clinician has evolved with it too. It now encourages a more bird’s eye, strategic involvement. How effective these services will be, if clinicians used pre-programmed e-platforms that automatically notifies a clinical manager, office staff and patients on each and every change and development that occurs with the patient, and records their detailed medical reports and personal information. “I know most things going on in all my patients’ homes, before visiting them. I can communicate with everyone related to patients’ side as well as the medical and office staff members at the same time, while I am with patients at their home via phone.” Says Tonya Gaston, Licensed Practitioner Nurse.
Ms. Gaston’s HHA, Home Care Wellness, Lincoln Park, IL, has been using Home Health Notify, the e-platform for HHAs, since past few months Ms. Gaston also added, “HHN gives me peace of mind because I now know all the medical staff visiting the patient’s home. I can go back and read the messages which have not been attended to by me, while I was busy, or was unable to attend while caring for our patients.”
A recently concluded pilot program trained HHAs to do effective care for the patients – and it found that additional training facility and platforms improved client’s health outcomes. The 18-month study, funded by a $1.9 million grant from New York State’s Department of Health, was implemented by the Bronx-based Paraprofessional Healthcare Institute (PHI). The study tracked 1,100 home care clients who were cared for by HHAs with advanced training, and found that this group had 24% fewer visits to the emergency room compared to those clients whose HHAs did not receive advanced training. The program sheds light on critical need of effective alternatives for escalated performance of the team of clinicians. Home Health Notify has been designed keeping in mind the challenges of HHAs, the platform acts as a catalyst to improvise strategies and processes that will help medical staff, better understand, analyse and communicate your Home Healthcare efforts.
Mr. Mukesh Sutar, Physical Therapist’s, work day was divided into three parts, firstly connecting with the office for new referrals, getting their addresses then logging into Kinnser for referral document and information. Secondly, back and forth communication with clinicians regarding clinical, confidential information. Thirdly, visiting patients, taking their pictures, completing essential paperwork and dropping them to office bi-weekly.
Since his company, TONE Home Healthcare Services, started using Home Health Notify, Mukesh says, “All the information regarding the patient (Personal / Medical) is on the record, I don’t need to log into any other portals (Kinnser). This saves me a lot of time and leaves no room for errors. Several phone calls during work are now a thing of the past, since all the communication can be handled through the HHN. The mapping of route has helped us clinicians avoid driving back and forth throughout the day.”
Besides direct impact on the health of home care customers, these advanced HHA platforms and their training initiatives have another important potential benefit; by offering an enhanced career path for our nation’s one million HHAs, they help reduce employee turnover, enable home care agencies to retain our most experienced HHAs as a vital resource. That, together with increasing embrace of advanced training for the nation’s home health workforce, adds up to a major win for the well-being of older Americans.
