Recruiting local nurses, aids
— from Tom Eversole for Orcas Senior Center —
On Tuesday, July 16, Nancy Howk, BSN, RN, Director of Clinical Services for Alpha Home Health explained in-home health services now offered on Orcas Island to a group of 25 interested seniors. She also introduced employee Robin Pilatti, RN, who serves Orcas.
Services include disease-specific care and teaching, medication management and wound care as well as physical, occupational, and speech therapy. To qualify, leaving the home should present considerable risk or hardship. No prior hospitalization is needed, and referrals may be made by your primary care provider.
Alpha Home Health, is the only state licensed, Medicare certified home health agency serving the San Juan Islands. The company accepts payment through Medicare, Medicare Advantage, Medicaid, and several private insurance companies.
The company is currently recruiting folks on Orcas who are registered and licensed practical nurses, physical, occupational, and speech therapists as well as qualified aids to these positions.
To access in-home health care or inquire about employment, contact: Ms. Howk at 425.357.1790.
THAT IS IMPRESSIVE AND HOPE IT IS COMPLETED.
The bulk of the need for professional home health services that will allow an Orcas Senior to stay here, at home, is for a regular long-term “Check on Mom” by someone with an experienced professional eye to anticipate and prevent mishap. It is the complementary function of Primary Care here, which like after-hours care, facilitates timely intervention to change the trajectory of disease progression.
This is explicitly excluded by Medicare/ Medicaid’s policy of only funding “episodic” care of already “homebound” individuals in 60-day chunks for a change in medical status. To vary from this formula is defined as fraud, and is a line so commonly crossed that at one point CMS closed 50% of the home health agencies in some regions.
The problem here is in looking to institutionally funded programs TO DEFINE our needs, filtered through a network of economic/ political self-interest TO DELIVER it, without paying attention to ACTUAL need or proven outcomes or a long history of failure, doing just this. The solution is the province of professional healthcare advocacy.
In rural island health, we send our failures to be buried elsewhere.
I feel this is another of those increasingly “both and” rather than “either or” arenas, Leif. In the case of Alpha Home Health, we will once again have access to Medicare-funded home health services for our people newly discharged from hospitals post surgery or after a relapse from a chronic condition where their physician orders skilled RN, PT, or OT services. 60 days of skilled follow-up can make all the difference when it comes to recovery and return to productive life.
I do hear you about the “Check on mom” need. It exists wherever there are people living in community – urban and remote – and ever more so when we have aging populations. Watchful eyes at the Senior Center, the Food Bank, the Odd Fellows, AA – not to mention friends, neighbors, families – all play a part; and we have them, and we are them. (And, if we’re honest – we will admit that when a pair of those eyes is focused on US . . . and how WE might need some intervention or another . . . our stubborn, independent islander spirit does not necessarily agree.) Life; it’s tender territory!
Stay tuned. I am starting to hear more about the sort of “home grown” rural island health services that might be a step toward more of what you envision.
Molly Roberts