Numerous years ago, the previous leadership chose to move our agency from a per visit reimbursement model to salaried for our field nurses. I think this has resulted in a decrease in efficiency. Now, if the clinician works over 4 hours, per our health system, we are required to pay them for a full 8-hour day even if they competed their visits in 5 hours.
I am having conversations with the new hospital admin that I now report to, to see about getting away from salaried, and back to a per visit or hourly pay model.
Does the Alliance have any national data addressing clinician reimbursement models, productivity levels, number of points per visit, etc., that I can access when making these arguments for change?
I would also welcome feedback from other agencies about their models, especially hospital-based Home Health systems. Unfortunately, the measure ours uses to determine what our number of FTEs should be per month is based on the calculations they use for patient coverage in the hospital setting, which is apples to oranges.
Thank you for your insight,
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J Scott Lambert MPT, JD
Director
Washington Regional Home Health
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