Open Forum

We are seeking to understand how other organizations manage home health requests for changes to the patient's plan of care, including verbal orders.  I appreciate your assistance in answering the following:

• Does your organization receive requests for orders for home health nurses?
• If yes, is the request for an order phoned into your organization, faxed, or sent electronically using the EHR?
• Do nurses in your organization provide a verbal order, taken from a provider, to the home health nurse?
• Do you have an operational workflow, protocol, or policy you can share related to home health requests for orders?

Thank you so much for your assistance.

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Michaelene Wolff, BSN, RN, OCN, AMB-BC
Coordinator, Clinical Programs
Chair, Ambulatory Telephone Protocol Committee
University of Colorado Hospital
Aurora CO
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My perspective is from an outpatient wound care clinic. 
We frequently receive requests from home health nurses for updated orders. We also frequently start or continue home health nurse visits.
Requests from home health nurses  are usually phoned in. We have just started with EPIC, I believe the use of the EHR for requests will increase. When we initiate home health nurse the  contact it is thru fax.
Wound care nurses will speak with home health nurses to review orders if they call, but we also send latest providers order to them via fax. That way we are not relying on verbal orders.
We don't have a specific policy or protocol in place. But our workflow is pretty consistent.

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Lauren Leimbach
RN
Centrastate Medical Center
Morganville NJ
(732)610-4583
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