Pratt Regional Medical Center’s Home Health Agency is proud to announce they are participating in the Home Health Quality Improvement National Campaign 2007. This campaign is a grassroots collaborative quality improvement effort among the home health community, health care leaders, and Quality Improvement Organizations (QIOs). The campaign focuses on improving the quality of patient care in the home health setting. The goal of the campaign is for home care patients to remain in their home settings, resulting in fewer avoidable hospitalizations. Home health agencies participating in the campaign will work to reduce the number of avoidable hospitalizations while improving clinical outcomes and patient satisfaction.

"Joining the National Campaign demonstrates Pratt Regional Medical Center's Home Health Agency's commitment to homebound patients in preventing avoidable acute care hospitalizations," Janice Cross, PRMC Director of Specialty Care Services stated.

The success of the campaign will be measured by the average success of the participating home health agencies. OASIS data collected for each Medicare and Medicaid patient served by the participating agencies will determine a participating agency’s average acute care hospitalization (ACH) rate. This publicly reported quality measure is reported on the Home Health Compare Web site.

The ultimate goal of the campaign is for agencies that have signed on to the campaign to reduce ACH by a five percent relative improvement. An agency with a 20 percent ACH rate, for instance, would want to decrease that figure to 19 percent by March 2008.

This campaign is coordinated at the national level by Quality Insights of Pennsylvania, the lead Medicare Quality Improvement Organization (QIO) for home health across the country. At the local or state level, state home health associations and QIOs have come together to serve as Local Area Networks of Excellence (LANEs), which will assist home health agencies in their goal to reduce avoidable hospitalizations. The LANEs will coordinate communication and improvement efforts with the agencies in their respective states. In addition, key home health stakeholders are providing campaign support at a national level.

For more information about PRMC Home Health services, please call 620-450-1647.

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