Quality Monitoring?
Dear Editor: My name is Elizabeth Faulkner and I have been a nurse for 40 years, 30 of those in the specialty areas of home health and hospice. I was the manager at Sitka Community Hospital from 2004-2015. I was on staff as an on-call nurse at SEARHC until the closure of Home Health in September 2023.
I first want to say that I am excited about the creation of a home-based program as it can potentially provide care to a wider range of patients. This is a benefit.
However, my concern is for the more vulnerable patients who have complicated and chronic medical conditions that require more nurse oversight, case management and coordination of care between other disciplines and their doctors. They require more frequent education and evaluation as slight changes can affect their overall medication diagnosis more rapidly and/or severely. They require the consistency of a skilled RN making regularly scheduled assessments in the home. This relationship is critical for avoiding ER visits and hospitalization.
Homebound people who experience the following diagnoses are examples of those who are most at risk: MS, Parkinson’s, Cerebral Palsy, ALS, rheumatoid arthritis, severe cardiac and pulmonary conditions, stroke aftercare and complicated medication regimes.
Could SEARHC create a chart audit or tracking system to monitor these patients in our community to see how they fare without a certified Medicare Home Health Program managing them? One of the many benefits of a Medicare Home Health Program is the programmatic oversight for quality assurance. How will SEARHC ensure that the patients who need it the most and their families still get the high quality services they need and deserve?
Thank you for your consideration.
Elizabeth Faulkner, RN, Sitka
