Firm to develop private duty outcomes system
Firm to develop private duty outcomes system
Providers are needed to participate in the project
Private duty providers who are looking for an outcomes measurement system to meet their needs now have an opportunity to help develop one.
As Private Duty Homecare previously reported (April 1997, p. 40), the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations in Oakbrook Terrace, IL, recently announced its plan and timetable for integrating outcomes and other performance measures into the accreditation process. The initiative, called ORYX: The Next Evolution in Accreditation, will require health organizations to collect performance data on outcomes of patient care and submit the data to the Joint Commission on a continuing quarterly basis.
What about private duty providers?
Providers such as Judy Earley, RN, president of Emerald Health Care Services in Pompton Lakes, NJ, had expressed concern that the performance measurement systems included in the Joint Commission’s list wouldn’t adequately serve the needs of private duty providers. "It’s not valuable for me to buy software that covers only [a small percent] of my patient population," she told PDH.
In her search for a solution, she contacted Jeff Souza at Healthcare Quality Management (HQM) in Yuba City, CA. HQM’s Homecare Data Bank is one of the performance measurement systems that have met the Joint Commission’s initial criteria. The data bank offers a variety of outcomes measurement systems that include performance outcomes, clinical outcomes, health status outcomes, patient satisfaction, and the Outcome and Assessment Information Set (OASIS) data set.
Souza, president of HQM, says he had previously heard from other private duty providers who wanted systems that fit their model of care. To help meet these needs, HQM has offered to develop a private duty outcomes system, but the company needs providers’ help.
"We need to identify about a dozen different providers [to participate in the project]. We will support the development of a tool that will meet their unique requirements. We will then move them through the testing phase in data collection to be able to collect consistent data or comparable data for the private duty market," Souza explains. "It’s just a matter of being able to focus some attention on private duty."
Personal care services preferred
To assist in the development of the outcomes system, HQM is looking for agencies that offer personal care or private duty as a significant portion of the services. The participating agencies need to be identified and ready to begin the project by June 1. There is no cost for the agencies that participate.
The completed system will identify the pertinent information in private duty that shows both the value and the benefit of the care. "We should be able to demonstrate the results private duty providers get and the value they bring to the health care continuum," Souza says.
Connecting private duty to the health care continuum is a goal, he adds. "There is no question that [those working in] the private duty segment of health care want to be able to show what they bring to the whole [picture]. You can’t do that without making them a part of it."
Starting from the ground up
The problem private duty agencies have with most outcomes systems is that they are based on visits, rather than hours, and clinical outcomes. "The big difference seems to be the particular focus the disease-oriented focus that home health has always maintained," Souza says. "Private duty is less disease-focused, so you are looking less at detailed clinical results. [Instead], we need to look at a health focus."
For this reason, the project development will start from the ground up. "We will relate private duty to the other markets, but we won’t tweak something else for it. Where would we start [if we did?]? The long-term institutional care model? Or the skilled nursing intermittent model?"
Once the project has some structure, the measurement tool will be compared to other measurement tools for similarities.
"Our commitment is to the whole continuum of care," he says. "If there are elements or data that cross multiple sectors of health care, we want to compare them." For example, the private duty outcomes might be compared to intermittent care, to long-term institutional care, or to assisted living care.
The final results of the project should show the contribution of private duty to health care. "One of the great benefits of private duty care is that it keeps people in a lower-cost, healthier, less disease-prone setting," Souza says. "The issue is how do we look at the overall health care or health impact of those services."
[Editor’s note: For more information about participating in the private duty outcomes development project, contact Jeff Souza at Healthcare Quality Management at (916) 755-1533. Or contact Judy Earley at Emerald Health Care Services at (201) 831-1465.]
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