The health care industry, lucrative as it may be, has several challenges and issues to meet and fix in order to ensure its proper functioning, care service deliverance and better future. There are a few proven and effective strategies that will help a health care agency struggling to stay competitive and perform well provide the best are services.
One such useful strategy to follow is shifting their focus to value transformation.
- This is the new trend followed by almost all health care agencies wherein the primary agenda is to move to a health care delivery system that has a high value.
- There are also a few specific components to ensure that the transition is smooth and effective.
All these components are inter-reliant, mutually reinforcing and symbiotic. This means that when all these components are considered together and used, it will help your transition process much easier and effective.
The value agenda
When you look at the current status pf the health care industry, it has been more or less that same for decades. This is because the industry has functioned relying on the specific set of mutually reinforcing elements of its own. These are:
- Better organization
- Specialty practice
- Independent private-practice physicians
- Focusing on quality measurement
- Process compliance
- Cost accounting
- Driven by value more than cost
- Fee-for-service payments
- Using cross-subsidies rampantly
- Developing a delivery system with little integration and replicating their service processes
- Siloed IT systems and technology around medical specialties and more.
Their service will have more value when the they fragment the patient populations. This is a useful practice followed by the home care agencies because it prevents most of their care providers to have to look after the critical masses of patients suffering from specific medical conditions.
This will actually form an interlocking structure of the strategic agenda and will enable you to know the reasons for the current home healthcare system being so resistant to change and the incremental steps did not have much impact in its functioning.
Creating Integrated Practice Units
Experts say that, that it is only the simultaneous progress approach on the multiple components will ensure that the strategic agenda is useful for you and provide all the benefits that it should.
- They say that the strategic agenda components are not radical or theoretical.
- All these are already being used in different organizations in varying degrees.
However, the experts are also of the opinion that there no agency or organization whether it is the academic medical centers or a community safety-net hospital has used it to the fullest potential. There is a lot of room for improvement so that more value to the patients is provided through the Home care jobs.
One such area of improvement can be the creation of Integrated Practice Units. The IPUs will form the foundation of the value transformation.
- This will change the way care is delivered and the clinicians organize them.
- This will in turn assure that the care services are designed as per the customers and their needs.
In health care, IPUs will ensure discrete and more organized service to not only treat the disease but also other related conditions, situations and complications that are commonly associated with it.
Challenges of the care workers
Another, and probably the most essential strategy to follow by the home care agencies is to understand their care workers and the challenges that they have to face. These challenges should be dissipated but for that they will first need to understand a few basic elements of it such as:
- Their emotional responses
- Their potential for cognitive decisions as well as dysfunction
- Their sensitive nature to any specific issue
- Their behavior and how it influences their interpersonal relationships and more.
All these are continual process and must be done on a day-to-day basis.
A specific scenario
An example will make things a bit clearer to you. Suppose, a care giver has to work with a patient who is suffering from chronic condition, is depressed and is highly demanding. In such a situation the home care worker may encounter with a lot of unpleasant situations such as:
- Angry outbursts
- Denial to take medication or injections
- Inappropriate behavior and much more.
It is only when you understand such possibilities you will be able to know the emotional and functional impact of such loss of temper or control. There may also be a possibility of the patient recompensing for such losses by governing the people around him or her.
In such situations, you will be better off if you identify the solutions that will help the home care worker to be more lenient of the behavior of the patient so that they can eventually manage their relationship with the patient in a better way.
Creating a care plan
Lastly, as a home care agency owner, you should create your care plans taking time and depending on the specific condition of the patient suffering from currently. One good thing about the care workers is that they are almost of the same age of the patients, well usually. This means that it will be easier for them to identify and relate to their geriatric clients to a greater degree.
However, care should be taken so that the care workers do not over-relate or develop a very close relationship with younger clients. This is because in such cases there is a high possibility of sexual overtures to a care worker by the client or vice versa.
Bottom line
All these issues should be anticipated well before to create a more integrated care plan. Proper training must be given to the care workers to deal strategically and differently with younger and older clients. Ideally, you will be better off if you focus more on sensitivity training along with other trainings so that the care workers can build appropriate relationships with their clients, young or old.
Lastly, make sure that your care workers specialize in a variety of disciplines so that they can handle any type of situation, complex or simple.
These simple yet effective steps will help you to take on and overcome the challenges in home health care.