Benchmarking and Reporting Home Health Care

This is the summary for the April 2022 survey conducted by AlayaCare and reported by Home Health Care News.

Home Care LINK’s mobile software has offered that capability for years.

Agencies will use their Care Coordinators to setup customized Caregiver requirements for each Care Recipient. Caregivers will be the data collectors.

The benchmark process starts by providing the caregivers with a customized, structured list of what to do and what to “watch for”.

Following every medical discharge or visit, a medical professional normally explains to the patient and/or their caregiver the changes that should be “watched for”.

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• Many Care Recipients have multiple chronic conditions and as a result, have multiple healthcare providers.
• The Agency’s care coordinator will need to integrate and customize all the providers’ in-home requirements.
• At this point, they will create the customized, structured list to make it easy for the caregiver to interpret and report.
• It should also be easy for the caregiver to supplement this list with personalized notes and pictures.

Ideally, each HCL observation is based directly on a physician’s checklist of conditions customized for a particular patient. Each HCL observation may be prioritized as normal or critical. If a critical observation is recorded, automatic alerts are sent (text or email) to whomever the Care Manager has designated. Home Care LINK makes it easy for the care coordinator to create the list.

A Home Care LINK End of Visit Checklist is created similarly to the example shown below.

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Caregivers will sign in and begin their visit using a unique PIN for that specific care recipient. When they do this list along with other customized requirements will appear on the appropriate caregivers’ mobile device.

This HCL approach works particularly well because:

Caregivers:

• See their Care Recipients (CR) far more frequently than their medical providers.
• Normally visit the same CR each time.

As a Result:

• Caregivers notice changing conditions from one visit to the next.
• Small changes are normal, however, sometimes the changes are significant, maybe even critical.
• Keeping a structured record of these changes helps achieve better health results.
• Research has shown that caregivers provide “relatively few false positives”.

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Related to benchmarking is medication. Is the care recipient taking all their medication as prescribed?

• Home Care LINK’s Medication Reminders mitigate the risk of seniors not following the doctor’s orders or forgetting to take medication.
• Home Care LINK lets the Care Coordinator:
  • Specify medications.
  • Task the caregiver to help manage the pillbox.

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Home Care LINK’s software makes it easy for the Caregiver to record and report the benchmarking information. Further, HCL makes it easy for the Agency’s Care Coordinator to review this real time healthcare information and take any required action.