Expertise offered for mental illness as primary diagnosis
Expertise offered for mental illness as primary diagnosis
Special support enables patient to live independently
The nurses and social workers in the mental health home care program offered by Visiting Nurse Services in Westchester in White Plains, NY, do serve as clinical expert resources for staff members of the medical home health side of the agency, but they also offer home care services to patients whose primary diagnosis is a mental health illness.
"The most common diagnoses for our mental health program are depressive disorder, schizophrenia, affective psychosis, and neuroticism," says Lisa Sioufas, LCSW-R, ACSW, manager of the mental health program at Visiting Nurse Services (VNS) in Westchester in White Plains, NY. The mental health program's active caseload runs between 130 and 150 patients each month, and the number of visits conducted in the first two quarters of 2009 was 5,300, she says. "In addition to their primary mental health diagnosis, a lot of the patients have other chronic medical conditions, such as diabetes," she says. "We may start seeing a patient on a daily basis to make sure medications are taken correctly; then, we work toward dropping visits to once or twice a week, then less than once a week," she says.
The program's goal is to get the patients to comply with medication regimens, to go to clinic and physician appointments as instructed, attend day programs, and to be able to stay at their home and remain as independent as possible, says Sioufas. "Many of our mental health patients are on their own, living in group homes, or other supportive settings, but often not with family," she says.
In addition to assessing the patient's mental health status at each visit, nurses also monitor blood sugar and any other vitals related to other health problems the patient may have. "Diabetes is a real issue for our patients, because they often don't have a healthy diet, which increases the risk of developing diabetes; and some of the medications they are on for a long time can cause diabetes," she says. For this reason, one of the psychiatric nurses also serves as a diabetes educator.
VNS has offered mental health home care for 10 years, but there are always changes made to improve the program, says Sioufas. "We added staff throughout the years as our program has grown, and we've just added a psychiatric intake nurse to our staff," she says. The psychiatric intake nurse works with patients and their families prior to discharge from the hospital to perform the assessment, handle paperwork, and smooth the transition from the hospital setting to the home setting, she explains. "Some of our patients have been in a hospital for months or years, so making sure that everything is arranged before they are discharged relieves a lot of anxiety."
The nurses and social workers in the mental health home care program offered by Visiting Nurse Services in Westchester in White Plains, NY, do serve as clinical expert resources for staff members of the medical home health side of the agency, but they also offer home care services to patients whose primary diagnosis is a mental health illness.Subscribe Now for Access
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