A surveyor says. . .
Beware these 3 home care problems
It’s the simple things that seem to be problems for home care agencies, says Diane Flynn, BSN, MBA, a surveyor with the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Health Care Organizations. "Sometimes, they forget to document what they have done. They even forget physicians’ orders, and that’s not just a survey issue, but a licensing issue."
Flynn has seen other problems arise in her surveys of late. Below are some of the recent problems she has seen relating to the information management standards.
• Failure to update patient goals.
"Problems get documented, but not new goals," she says.
• Failure to document the communication of the team as a whole.
Flynn says she will see documentation from nurses and from administrators, but not of communication between them.
• Failure to document competency assessments.
Agencies must define how they will assess caregiver competency and then make sure they follow that definition. "You have to choose which things you are going to do on live patients, and then make sure they are done. You can’t just rely on written and verbal tests."
For the most part, Flynn says agencies are doing well with the management-of- information chapter. But she says she will never cease to be surprised by the simple mistakes that trip people up.
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