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Call Visiting Nurses for Care at Home - or Work
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Business New Haven
1/22/2001
By: John Florian
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Hospital stays are certainly shorter these days, but patients can continue medical care in their homes through a network of visiting nurse services. Businesses can also take advantage of programs offered by these health-care professionals, notes Susan Faris, president and CEO of VNA Community Healthcare (www.connecticuthomecare.com), which serves shoreline communities east of New Haven. Based in Guilford, Faris explains her organization's programs and challenges.
Susan, what do you do?
VNA [Visiting Nurse Association] Community Healthcare is a Medicare-certified state licensed home health agency, providing skilled nursing and rehabilitation services, as well as home health aide services. We also have a very large health-promotion department that launches educational programs as well as group clinics, high blood pressure and cholesterol screening clinics.
And your service area is?
We service the towns from East Haven to Old Saybrook. In the fiscal year ending last June we provided 116,000 home care visits.
What's the size of your staff to do all this?
We have 235 employees. About 40 are supervisory, clerical and scheduling and business office people, and the remainder are full- and part-time caregivers. Among them are 22 full-time nurses. Eight are master-prepared psychiatric nurses, and the other nurses provide medical-surgical needs to patients following their discharge from the hospital. We also have home health aides and physical and speech therapists.
So all your services are provided in the clients' home.
Yes, except for classes we conduct in the community.
And who pays for this?
Funding comes from many sources, including Medicare, Medicaid, contracts with private insurers, the state's Department of Social Services, the United Way and others.
Do you have any connection with businesses?
Our programs are open to the public and we have relationships with certain drugstores, where we hold flu clinics. For businesses, we can provide health-promotion classes and activities, for a small fee, such as giving flu shots. We are a community resource for businesses and their employees who are seeking information on health-care issues.
We've been hearing about nurse shortages lately. Is that affecting your operation?
No, not yet. We've been fortunate to have a high retention rate. But as is the case with most other home health-care agencies, we're having difficulty recruiting home health aides. These are people who have training similar to that of a certified nursing assistant in a hospital or a nursing home. They have some assessment skills, but not to the degree of a nurse. In a home-care agency, a small core of home health aides works full time, but most are part-time because there are periods when you can't keep everyone busy. For instance, clients usually want their care between eight in the morning and noon, and then again toward the end of the day when they need help with things like getting back to bed or showering.
Why are you having difficulty hiring these people?
Mostly it's because the state doesn't reimburse enough money in its programs to pay the aides a living wage or, in many cases, to offer them health benefits. By law, we have to make sure these workers are supervised, have competency training, and undergo background checks. And there are additional overhead expenses related to hiring them.
How are you meeting this challenge?
Well, the Connecticut Association for Home Care has ongoing meetings with the [state's] Department of Social Services to try to negotiate higher wages. Even though Connecticut has a large surplus, we have not been able to use any of that money to recruit home health aides. Nursing homes are in the same position. So unfortunately, these workers end up in the category of the working poor - they can't afford to buy health care, and we can't afford to pay for their health care. It's a difficult situation.
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