FAMILY HOMECARE’S COMMITMENT TO QUALITY CARE

Family HomeCare joined the national Home Health Quality Initiative (HHQI) to improve care delivered by home health agencies. The Quality Initiative was designed by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), to improve quality of patient care through public reporting and community-based efforts.

The HHQI released the quality data measures to the public in November 2003. The release of data gives the public comparative information about home health agencies in their area. Consumers are encouraged to use this information as a tool to learn about home health care and they can obtain the comparative data by going on-line at www.medicare.gov and clicking on Home Health Compare. Consumers can also request information by calling toll free at 1-800-MEDICARE.

However, long before CMS established this formal quality initiative, Family HomeCare was committed to providing quality care. On a quarterly basis, our agency obtained statistics from Medicare regarding home health services in Louisiana and would compare ourselves against those statistics. We organized and maintained a system of tracking our patient outcomes and were always striving to improve those outcomes. Thus with the implementation of Home Health Quality Initiative by CMS, Family HomeCare was primed and ready to sign on with the Louisiana Health Care Review, Inc., which is the organization designated by CMS to oversee the quality initiative in Louisiana.

As part of our commitment to the CMS Quality Initiative, Family HomeCare created a Plan of Action, participated in many state sponsored quality improvement meetings, and continued to monitor our outcomes closely. The end results of our efforts shown by our data are significant. Our agency scored better than the state and national averages on many of the reported measures. But it does not end here and now, Family HomeCare will always continue in our commitment to strive to be a provider high quality, professional home care to our patients.