Hospice

Hello,

I am interested in hearing how others staff after-hours/weekends for hospice. In addition to hours and amount of staff, how is your service area or hours divided up amongst the clinicians during after-hours/weekends?

Thank you, 

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Lindsey Cosgrove, LPN
Clinical Supports Coordinator
Emmanuel Hospice
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Good Morning -- we are a fairly small agency - ADC for us is 70-80 and we have our RNCMs take call in rotation - usually ends up being every 9-10 weeks. They manage triage and after hours visits. We do have an LPN that is typically able to see scheduled weekend visits for us. In the week that the RNCM is on-call, their case load is covered during the day by our resource nurse so they have no daytime responsibilities. Our service is a 25 mile radius around our office. 

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[Meloni] [Jensen] [RN, BSN, MSM]
[Director, Quality Improvement]
[Providence St Joseph Home Care]
[Anaheim] [CA]
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We found what worked best was to hire after hours coverage, a nurse for Monday-Thursday 5pm-8am and then we have 2 who share the weekend coverage from 5pm Friday through 8am Monday.  One takes the phone calls and they split visits as our territory is 60 miles from the office.  This has allowed us to give our nurse case managers a break and seems to work well.  We have a couple of prn staff who are available on weekends for SIA or prn visits. 

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[Meloni] [Jensen] [RN, BSN, MSM]
[Director, Quality Improvement]
[Providence St Joseph Home Care]
[Anaheim] [CA]
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Hello- We are a small agency in central Montana. Our service area is 6,ooo square miles, we cover two very large counties. I have a nurse on call 24/7 for Hospice, one of my 7 nurses take call rotating per schedule, usually 1 night a week and then on the weekends they work, which is about 1 a month, then they are on call from Friday at 4pm until Monday at 8am. If schedule for a weekend looks busy often another nurse will assist with call and seeing patients. 

Kathy Ward

Home Health/Hospice Manager

Central Montana Medical Center

kward@cmmccares.com

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[Meloni] [Jensen] [RN, BSN, MSM]
[Director, Quality Improvement]
[Providence St Joseph Home Care]
[Anaheim] [CA]
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