One agency’s development and implementation of standardized care paths has helped them reduce patient rehospitalizations and increase revenue by allowing clinicians to take on more patients.
 
Barbara Bickett, RN executive director of home care at Heritage Home Healthcare & Hospice in Albuquerque, N.M. and her colleague, RN clinical manager Lorena Parra, have worked together on building 28 care paths for the agency.
 
Since putting these care paths in place, Bickett and Parra say the agency has seen a decrease in rehospitalizations and an improvement in overall patient satisfaction. According to the most recent Home Health Compare data released in April 2017, the agency has a rehospitalization rate of 13.3%, that’s better than the national average of 16.5%.
 
Parra says rehospitalizations are going down because patient care is improving as a result of care paths.
 
They identified the need after noticing clinicians were keeping patients on care for longer periods than necessary, and it wasn’t keeping patients out of the hospital, Bickett says. A chart audit also revealed inconsistencies in disease interventions that were taught to patients, according to Parra.
 
So they set out to develop a standardized plan to outline expected short-term and long-term goals, interventions on which to educate the patient and a timeline of care to keep clinicians on the same page.
 
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