MENDOTA COMMUNITY HOSPITAL’S HOME HEALTH DEPARTMENT
NOTED FOR QUALITY SERVICE

Mendota Community Hospital’s Home Health Department Agrees to Participate in National Home Health Quality Improvement Campaign.

More than 3,000 home health agencies nationwide voluntarily joined the 2007 Home Health Quality Improvement (HHQI) National Campaign within the first days of its launch in mid-January. These agencies represent over 30 percent of the 8,100 Medicare-certified home health agencies in the nation.

The 3,000+ agencies including Mendota Community Hospital attained “Premier Participating Agency” status when they signed up in the first 36 hours of the campaign’s launch on January 11, 2007. Premier status agencies will be considered early adopters of the campaign’s goal and related intervention.

The campaign is a 12-month interdisciplinary approach to improving the quality of care provided to home health patients. This effort unites the home care community under a shared vision of reducing avoidable hospitalizations to improve the quality of patient care for Medicare beneficiaries. Interdisciplinary means information and educational resources will be shared with home health staff at every level—from administrators and management to social workers, therapists and home health aides—to improve the quality of home health care. The ultimate goal of the campaign is for agencies that have signed on to reduce acute care hospitalization. Registration for the campaign was free and voluntary. Continuing participation in the teleconferences and learning sessions they offer is also free.

This quality improvement 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. Hired by the National Campaign, the Illinois Foundation for Quality Health Care (IFQHC) is Illinois’ and Mendota Community Hospital’s Medicare Quality Improvement Organization.

Experience has shown that patients prefer to stay at home whenever possible while recuperating from an injury or illness. Being hospitalized can create financial and emotional burdens for patients and their families. Currently, more than one in four home health patient episodes will result in hospitalization. The campaign seeks to reduce those hospitalizations that are avoidable by providing tools and resources, information sharing, best-practice sharing and benchmarking.

More information about the campaign can be found on the official Web site, www.homehealthquality.org.