Home Health & Hospice Week

Include family teaching, pain, odor control, and more in a protocol to help reduce ulcer rates. Just because a patient is on hospice care doesn't mean the burden is off providers to prevent and treat pressure ulcers. "The hospice surveyor guidance doesn't include anything specific about pressure ulcer prevention or treatment," says Lynn Serra, a consultant with Beth Carpenter and Associates in Lake Barrington, Ill. Even so, hospices that don't provide and document essential skin-care services could earn less than optimal patient or survey outcomes -- or find themselves caught in the cross-hairs of a lawsuit brought by a grieving family upset by a patient's pressure ulcer. Best practice: Hospice staff should identify if the patient has existing pressure ulcers or is at risk for developing them -- and then implement strategies that are like those "you might find in non-palliative settings," says  JoAnne Reifsnyder, program director for health policy at Jefferson [...]