Caring : National Association for Home Care magazine
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Palliative medicine in hospice is emerging as a growing discipline, committed to holistic and compassionate, comforting care for seriously ill patients. It is essential to include aggressive medical therapy for pain relief; even more important to the issue is that the patient be the central figure in decisions of care.
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The National Association for Home Care (NAHC) has involved its members in studying and influencing the directions for health care reform. To this end, NAHC appealed to the expertise of its members. Home care and hospice representatives--administrators, providers, and policymakers--met throughout the summer at NAHC's offices in a series of focus groups to discuss health care reform and its effect on home care. This article highlights some of the reports from those focus groups.
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Quality Improvement Teams can identify areas of customer dissatisfaction and raise coordinators' and caregivers' awareness of problems. Through home care coordination--whereby an expert home care nurse develops partnerships with key referral sources and facilities--they improved services and built both market share and service excellence into the wellness continuum.
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A disaster by definition is never expected; two disasters are almost beyond definition. Yet the agency that had to react to two disasters in one week turned its response into preparation for the next disaster--or two.