Home Healthcare Nurse was the co-sponsor with the journal Nursing 2007 for the first home carefocused preconference entitled "From Hospital to Home." This workshop focused on the areas of concern that impact both hospitals and home care and addressed "Patient Safety"; "Deciding on Which Course of Care: Home Care, Hospice or Palliative Care"; and "Infection Prevention and Control Strategies." The Nursing 2007 Symposium was held April 19th at Disney's Coronado Springs Resort in Florida. We will keep you posted should this become an annual event-we would love to have you join us!!
Home Healthcare Nurse is the Visiting Nurse Association of America (VNAA's) "Official Journal of Clinical Practice." The VNAA held their annual meeting in Palm Desert on April 25-27. I had the honor again of being the moderator for the poster/research session entitled "Meet the Authors." Six innovative programs were presented by VNAA members from across the country. I will be working with the presenters/authors to contribute manuscripts for review related to their interesting topics.
At both of these meetings I had the pleasure of reading some of the winning "Memories." You may recall that in January, we published "We Want to Hear From You: A Call for Memories." We asked that in celebrating HHN's 25th year, readers send in their stories-and we got some great ones. We could pick just 5, and the winners' prize was a Lippincott Williams & Wilkins gift certificate. Here are the five winners: Jane Cooperman, Kristin Harrison, Bonnie Martin, Steve Orsinski, and Sandy Whittier. Congratulations to them all, and their "Memories" will be published through 2007 in upcoming issues of HHN.
In this issue the important topic of "Research on Telehealth in Home Care: Adoption and Models of Care" is addressed. The Visiting Nurse Service of New York coordinates and contributes the Research Briefs column and summarizes the best and latest of what is "out there" and has applicability to care and supporting evidence-based practice.
The Patient Education column addresses a topic many are wrestling with-decreasing or avoiding hospitalizations-with a focus on chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, a problematic diagnosis given its usual trajectory. Other topics in this issue include oral anticoagulation therapy, infection control and prevention, prevention of respiratory syncytial virus in homebound premature infants, and assessing pain in the home.
Those working on the hospitalization problem are growing in ranks. According to the Home Health Quality Improvement Organization Support Center, the campaign continues to grow: as of May 7th, there were 5,050 home health agencies signed up!! This is approximately 60% of Medicare-certified HHAs!! I would love to hear from you as you make a notable difference in your numbers and develop mechanisms/processes from which others might learn. E-mail me at [email protected]. I would love to hear your success stories and so would your colleagues.
The following is the schedule and topics of Home Health Quality Improvements available monthly on the Web.
Schedule for Best Practice Intervention Packages
Packages will be available to download at this Web location the first week of each month.
* March 2007, Hospitalization Risk Assessment: http://www.homehealthquality.org/hh/hha/interventionpackages/hra.aspx.
* April 2007, Patient Emergency Plan: http://www.homehealthquality.org/hh/hha/interventionpackages/ecp.aspx.
* May 2007, Medication Management: http://www.homehealthquality.org/hh/hha/interventionpackages/medmanagement.aspx.
* June 2007, Phone Monitoring and Front-Loading Visits
* July 2007, Teletriage
* August 2007, Telemonitoring
* September 2007, Immunization
* October 2007, Physician Relationships
* November 2007, Fall Prevention
* December 2007, Patient Self-Management
* January 2008, Disease Management
* February 2008, Transitional Care Coordination
Tina M Marrelli