Home Health & Hospice Week

See where most HHAs go wrong when it comes to these valuable assistants. A huge caseload of patients backlogged for therapy, staffing shortages, a high cost per visit, and less than optimal productivity -- sound like your home health agency's rehab situation? It's not a pretty picture for most HHAs in these crunched times. The good news: Most agencies can remedy these problems by making changes to their therapy assistant utilization, experts say. You can't change your assistant utilization until you know what your state practice act allows in the home care setting. "Frequency, scope of practice, and type of supervision are state-dependent," says physical therapist Francine Wheelock, manager of clinical information systems for MaineGeneral Health in Augusta, Maine. Plus, states have their own rules on therapist-to-assistant ratios, she adds. Careful: Some agencies consider their state practice act "the gold standard of care," which is not always clinically appropriate, says PT [...]