Home Health & Hospice Week

Tip: Establish a rapport with office staff to hasten communication improvement. Home care providers may find physician relationships getting frayed under burdensome regulatory requirements such as the face-to-face physician encounter rule. Try this communication approach to improve those critical affiliations. For a home health nurse, getting a direct line to speak with a physician is a challenge. One way to help is to educate new nurses about this challenge and develop a strategy to address it before they start the work, says Boston-based nurse Debra Bertrand with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Look at the big picture for establishing effective communication before you need to make that call, says Bertrand, who spent a number of years in the field as a home health clinician. Consider the timing of your approach and the vehicle you use to communicate, Bertrand says. Check with the frontline manager of the physician's office. Ask what [...]