Discharge Planning for Home Health Care is a comprehensive, step-by-step guide to assessing the needs of patients and establishing a coordinated hospital-to-home discharge plan. The referral format and assessment tools provide the user with an organized and systematic approach for the transition of the patient through the continuum of care. This comprehensive resource is based on current reimbursement and regulatory issues and contains over 150 tools for easy application to a broad spectrum of health care settings.

v. 1. Research findings -- v. 2. Concepts and methodology -- v. 3. Implementation issues -- v. 4. Programs, tools and products.

"Nurses play a vital role in improving the safety and quality of patient car -- not only in the hospital or ambulatory treatment facility, but also of community-based care and the care performed by family members. Nurses need know what proven techniques and interventions they can use to enhance patient outcomes. To address this need, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), with additional funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, has prepared this comprehensive, 1,400-page, handbook for nurses on patient safety and quality -- Patient Safety and Quality: An Evidence-Based Handbook for Nurses. (AHRQ Publication No. 08-0043)." - online AHRQ blurb, http://www.ahrq.gov/qual/nurseshdbk/

Table of Contents Foreword Introduction Ch. 1 Home health administration : an overview 3 Ch. 2 The home health agency 16 Ch. 3 Medicare conditions of participation 27 Ch. 4 The joint commission's home care accreditation program 63 Ch. 5 CHAP accreditation : standards of excellence for home care and community health organizations 71 Ch. 6 Accreditation for home care aide and private duty services 81 Ch. 7 ACHC : accreditation for home care and alternate site health care services 86 Ch. 8 Certificate of need and licensure 92 Ch. 9 Credentialing : organizational and personnel options for home care 101 Ch. 10 The relationship of the home health agency to the state trade association 111 Ch. 11 The national association for home care and hospice 115 Ch. 12 The visiting nurse association of America 124 Ch. 13 Self-care systems in home health care nursing 131 Ch. 14 Home health care documentation and record keeping 135 App. 14-A COP standards pertaining to HHA clinical record policy 147 App. 14-B Abington Memorial Hospital home care clinical records 150 Ch. 15 Computerized clinical documentation 161 Ch. 16 Home telehealth : improving care and decreasing costs 176 Ch. 17 Implementing a competency system in home care 185 Ch. 18 Meeting the need for culturally and linguistically appropriate services 211 Ch. 19 Classification : an underutilized tool for prospective payment 224 Ch. 20 Analysis and management of home health nursing caseloads and workloads 236 Ch. 21 Home health care classification (HHCC) system : an overview 247 Ch. 22 Nursing diagnoses in home health nursing 261 Ch. 23 Perinatal high-risk home care 274 Ch. 24 High technology home care services 279 Ch. 25 Discharge of a ventilator-assisted child from the hospital to home 291 Ch. 26 Performance improvement 301 Ch. 27 Evidence-based practice : basic strategies for success 310 Ch. 28 Quality planning for quality patient care 315 Ch. 29 Program Evaluation 320 App. 29-A Formats for presenting program evaluation tools Ch. 30 Effectiveness of a clinical feedback approach to improving patient outcomes 341 Ch. 31 Implementing outcome-based quality improvement into the home health agency 352 Ch. 32 Benchmarking and home health care 383 Ch. 33 Administrative policy and procedure manual 395 Ch. 34 Discharge planning 399 Ch. 35 Strategies to retain and attract quality staff 421 Ch. 36 Evaluating productivity 436 Ch. 37 Labor-management relations 448 Ch. 38 Human resource management 459 Ch. 39 Staff development in a home health agency 474 Ch. 40 Transitioning nurses to home care 484 Ch. 41 Case management 495 Ch. 42 Managed care 499 Ch. 43 Community-based long-term care : preparing for a new role 507 Ch. 44 Understanding the exposures of home health care : an insurance primer 519 Ch. 45 Budgeting for home health agencies 527 Ch. 46 Reimbursement 535 Ch. 47 How to read, interpret, and understand financial statements 549 Ch. 48 Management information systems 558 Ch. 49 Legal issues of concern to home care providers 571 Ch. 50 Understanding the basics of home health compliance 590 Ch. 51 The HIPAA standards for privacy of individually identifiable health information 616 Ch. 52 Ethical practice in the daily service to home care client, their families, and the community 666 Ch. 53 Participating in the political process 675 Ch. 54 Strategic planning 693 Ch. 55 Marketing : an overview 708 Ch. 56 The internet in home health and hospice care 723 Ch. 57 Disease management programs 736 Ch. 58 The process of visiting nurse association affiliation with a major teaching hospital 756 Ch. 59 Grantsmanship in home health care : seeking foundation support 771 Ch. 60 Home care volunteer program 778 Ch. 61 The manager as published author : tips on writing for publication 796 Ch. 62 Student placements in home health care agencies : boost or barrier to quality patient care? 810 Ch. 63 A student program in one home health agency 818 Ch. 64 The role of the physician in home care 834 Ch. 65 Research in home health agencies 840 Ch. 66 Hospice care : pioneering the ultimate love connection about living not dying 850 App. 66-A State of Connecticut physician assisted living (PAL) directive 863 App. 66-B Summary guidelines for initiation of advanced care 864 Ch. 67 Safe harbor : a bereavement program for children, teens, and families 866 Ch. 68 Planning, implementing, and managing a community-based nursing center : current challenges and future opportunities 872 Ch. 69 Adult day services - the next frontier 883 Ch. 70 Partners in healing : home care, hospice, and parish nurses 891 Ch. 71 Meeting the present challenges and continuing to thrive in the future : tips on how to be successful as an administrator in home health and hospice care 899.

Hidden opportunities to improve profits in the healthcare industry abound in the area of discharge planning. The Discharge Planning Handbook for Healthcare: Top Ten Secrets to Unlocking a New Revenue Pipeline provides innovative new solutions that will show hospital administrators how to turn one of the most antiquated aspects of healthcare into on

Book discusses federal regulations surrounding discharge planning.

The Roundtable on Health Literacy brings together leaders from academia, industry, government, foundations, and associations and representatives of patient and consumer interests who work to improve health literacy. To achieve its mission, the roundtable discusses challenges facing health literacy practice and research and identifies approaches to promote health literacy through mechanisms and partnerships in both the public and private sectors. To explore the aspects of health literacy that impact the ability of patients to understand and follow discharge instructions and to learn from examples of how discharge instructions can be written to improve patient understanding of-and hence compliance with-discharge instructions, the Roundtable on Health Literacy held a public workshop. The workshop featured presentations and discussions that examined the implications of health literacy for discharge instructions for both ambulatory and inpatient facilities. Facilitating Patient Understanding of Discharge Instructions summarizes the presentations and discussions of the workshop. This report gives an overview of the impact of discharge instructions on outcomes, and discusses the specifics of inpatient discharge summaries and outpatient after-visit summaries. The report also contains case studies illustrating different approaches to improving discharge instructions.