Welcome to the Home Health QIOSC monthly e-Bulletin, your source for the latest updates in home health quality improvement. You may either browse the newsletter or use the icons at the top of the page to jump to a specific section.

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Roadmap to Improvement in Pain
The Roadmap to Improvement in Pain Interfering with Activity is a two-part resource for both quality improvement teams and agency clinicians. The two-page tip sheet can be utilized and customized by the QI team to include key best practices and strategies for agency improvement. Once updated with agency information, the tip sheet can be distributed to all clinicians as a quick reminder and reference guide.

The second part of the Roadmap is a checklist with supporting resources that the QI team can also utilize to support Improvement in Pain Interfering with Activity goals. The checklist contains action items including staff and patient education, monitoring and communication beneficial for improvement.

Practical Application: Personalize the checklist when discussing an agency’s POA status and forward to them with a plan for improving intervention actions.

Pain Compliance Poster
Home health agencies can use two new compliance posters to promote their QI efforts related to pain. Agencies can customize the posters with their best practices, compliance rates, and goals. Two designs are provided to give agencies more options to share information.

Home Health STAR
The Home Health STAR Web site was updated this month to include the 12-month data period from 10/1/05 to 9/30/06. This corresponds with the data period that was posted to Home Health Compare on 3/29/07, and this data period is labeled Q3 2006 on the STAR site.

Several new providers were added to the STAR system. These agencies are not applicable toward the Task 1B target setting extra credit score – you may still want to encourage them to begin using the HH STAR site.

You can view the security keys for any agency (including the new agencies) by logging into STAR with your QIO account and then clicking on Select an Agency. Finally, after selecting an agency from the list, click on Agency Profile to view the Security Key to Create Account.

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May 1, 2007 - Systems Improvement Organizational Culture POA – follow up/revisions entered into PARTner.

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Telehealth Myths, Misperceptions and Misquotes
From the Healthcare Information & Management System Society 2007 Conference

Speaker, Joe Tracy, Vice President for Telehealth Services for Lehigh Valley Hospital and Health Network in Allentown, PA

“Build it and they will come.”
“All practitioners like it.”
“Training one person is all you need to do.”
“Broadband is everywhere.”
“One size fits all and it’s all plug and play.”
“If something goes wrong with a group of physicians, you will get another chance.”
“New equipment is always backward compatible.”
“Networks never fail.”
“It’s just wires and doctors.”

(Source: Healthcare IT News, February 28, 2007)

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View the March e-Bulletin.

View the February e-Bulletin.

View the January e-Bulletin.

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