Beyond the four walls of Cabell Huntington Hospital, the care continues.
Often, when a patient leaves the confines of a hospital bed and the care of round-the-clock nursing, there are still health needs and concerns that need addressed. Cabell Huntington Hospital’s Home Health Agency, recognized as one of the most successful Medicare-certified home health care providers in the United States, offers a helping hand to patients and their families long after a hospital stay is over.
Cabell Huntington Hospital’s Home Health Agency is staffed by skilled nurses and home health aides who care for patients in their homes as a comfortable and less expensive alternative to prolonged hospital stays or nursing home care. Ancillary services such as pharmacy, nutrition, laboratory, social work and home infusion are also available. With a doctor’s order, rehabilitation staff members offer physical, speech and occupational therapies to patients who need them.
“The people we serve are medically restricted to their homes. These are not folks who can get out and go to Wal-Mart every week,” said director Andra Hardin, RN. “We take referrals from hospitals and physicians, and we have seen patients from the Cleveland Clinic, Grant Memorial in Columbus and the University of Virginia, as well as Cabell Huntington.”
The Home Health staff includes 10 RNs, two LPNS and four home health aides, and it is supplemented by two physical therapists, four physical therapy assistants, two speech therapists, three occupational therapists who offer assistance primarily on a short-term basis, from three or four weeks to 60 days.
“These are people who leave the hospital and are still ill. They have wounds that won’t heal. They’re weak. Their endurance is low. We see them in their homes to help them get back to a normal life. Everyone prefers going home for skilled care instead of remaining in the hospital or moving to a nursing home,” Hardin said.
Home Health staff members are trained to perform a three-hour assessment during their first interaction with patients to determine their functional levels. More than 80 questions help Home Health providers decide if a particular patient is best suited for Home Health services or more thorough 24-hour-a-day care.
“Can patients wash their upper and lower bodies? Can they transfer from the bed to the bathtub? Do patients understand all of their medications? These are clues as to what therapy is needed. We make all of our plans of care in conjunction with physicians and we look at the whole patient,” Hardin explained.
Home Health employees like registered nurse Glenna Saunders say that getting involved with patients one-on-one is a rewarding experience.
“You can’t help it; sometimes you can’t separate your feelings and what a patient’s needs are. You get very close to these patients, sometimes seeing them daily for several weeks,” Saunders explained. “You also get very close to the familyor the caregivers because you’re working closely with them. It is always our goal to educate the primary caregiver about how to care for the patient. A lot of times, folks assume we’ll come three times a day for six weeks and we don’t do that. Education is critical.”
In the office, patient care coordinator Vickie Courts works as an extended support network for families, helping to coordinate care between nurses, aides and social workers, taking referrals and making referrals for patients with needs such as chore services and addressing needs and concerns from patients and their families.
All of the services and offerings of Cabell Huntington’s Home Health Department helped the agency rank among the top 25 percent of providers across the country in 2007. The award from HomeCareElite is based on performance measures using data in the areas of quality outcomes, quality improvement and financial performance.
“We looked at patients’ improvement in walking, patients whose surgical wounds have improved and their improvements in breathing. These are true measurements of how a patient has improved,” Hardin explained. “We were the only agency in West Virginia in the Top 100. This is a great honor because it represents the quality of the care we provide to our patients.”
One of Home Health’s extended family members is three-year-old Rylee Davis.
Born June 16, 2004 at a neighboring hospital to Aaron and Deborah Davis, Rylee was – initially – the picture of health, but, soon after her birth, the Davises realized something was terribly wrong.
“She wouldn’t wake up, she was lethargic, she had no suck and no gag reflexes, and she didn’t even cry when they did the heel stick,” said Deborah, who had a healthy daughter already at home. “They thought maybe it was meningitis, but we weren’t getting any answers, so we had her transferred to Cabell Huntington.”
During the transfer, Rylee coded and had to be intubated. It took more than a week of tests, MRIs and spinal taps to tell the Davises what they already feared – Rylee had a very rare genetic disorder affecting her metabolic and neurologic system, nonketotic hyperglycinemia. Doctors and staff did not expect Rylee, fighting this life-threatening, non-treatable disorder, to take one breath off of the ventilator.
“We’ve had Rylee home four years this June and I know, without a doubt, we couldn’t have brought her home and cared for her on the level we have, without Cabell Huntington Home Health,” Deborah said. Davis and her husband have since lost their third daughter, Kaymaen, who lived just nine days, to the same disorder. “I want people to know there are wonderful programs available to them, that there’s an agency out there that will go above and beyond the call of duty. With them, your child is not a number. She’s not a case. They treat her like they would treat one of their own.”
The Davises were sent home with hospice nearly four years ago, and though they credit hospice for their outstanding work, they made a decision to seek a different course of care.
“We decided we weren’t going to spend the rest of our lives waiting for her to pass away. We had to find our normal,” Deborah said. “We needed a different option. We were treated so well by the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) nurses and staff that we figured if the Home Health nurses were half as good, we’d be happy. The care we’ve gotten has been absolutely phenomenal.”
The Davis family was assigned Becky Salyers, who had worked in PICU before and was very familiar with special needs children.
“What they’ve done is give us a safety net to make it so we can take care of Rylee. We know that any time we have a question or need anything, not only can we call a specialist, but a Home Health nurse. We have her home number, her cell number, everything, and we can call and say, ‘Nurse Becky, what do you think about this?’ or ‘Can you come by and check this?’” said Deborah, adding that Home Health comes to the Davis household as needed for everything from blood draws to regular immunizations. “They look at it as ‘How can we make it easier for you to take care of Rylee at home?’ and we are so thankful for that.”
“She is our daughter, not our diagnosis,” Deborah continued. “It has enabled us, as a young family, to get out and love life and know they’re just a phone call away. We want to see Rylee make her mark on the world and make a difference just like any other parent wants for their child, and Home Health helps make that possible for us.”
Cabell Huntington Hospital’s Home Health Department serves patients in Cabell, Wayne, Lincoln and Putnam counties in West Virginia, as well as Lawrence County in Ohio and Boyd County in Kentucky. For more information, please call (304) 526-2075.
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