Home Health & Hospice Week

Industry's good Samaritans pitch in on disaster relief.

Three weeks after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, the home care industry continues to struggle -- and to offer help to those struggling.
 
Home health agencies' patients and employees who evacuated are scattered across multiple states. And agencies that are trying to get back to operating normally are having trouble finding them.
 
New Orleans HHA ACTS Home Health Care "is searching for our valued clients and employees," said a Sept. 10 posting to the HomeCare Association of Louisiana's hurricane message board. "We plan on standing the office up at another location and we are currently trying to get accountability on all of our patients," said the posting from ACTS' Alan J. Tucker.
 
And Baton Rouge, LA-based Amedisys Inc. "is continuing its efforts to contact all patients affected by Hurricane Katrina to ensure that their health care needs are met," the company says in a release. All but two of the regional chain's offices are up and running now, it says.
 
Desperately seeking employees: Multiple New Orleans-area agencies have posted similar messages on HCLA's message board seeking staff and patients. The association set up the forum to help agencies' employees communicate and to allow HHA employees to offer shelter and jobs to displaced colleagues.
 
The National Association for Home Care & Hospice is offering its toll free number, 1-888-HOMECARE, "for workers from the disaster areas who are seeking help finding work or connecting with their agencies," the trade group says.
 
Local areas like Baton Rouge are seeing a surge of patients from the New Orleans area, NAHC reports in its newsletter to members. "Many of the evacuees there have developed increased pressure ulcers and infections as a result of the evacuation conditions," the association says.
 
The Hospice Foundation of America has launched a Web site aimed at helping families connect with hospice patients. Establishing the site was a last resort. "Despite Hospice Foundation of America's numerous requests that the federal government post hospice patient-specific listings on their most heavily- trafficked website, we have been ignored," the Washington, DC and Miami-based organization blasts in a release.
 
Quick connections are vital because patients are terminally ill. Family members can post messages at www.hospicefoundation.org and hospice employees with knowledge of transfer arrangements can contact those who have posted messages, the foundation says. 
 
Note: HCLA's message board is at www.hclanet.org/forum.cfm.