Improving In-Home Patient Care by Equipping Home Care Technology and Home Care Workers To Identify Emotional Cues and Concerns
Individuals receiving some form of care within the home may experience feelings of isolation or sadness. Some home care patients may desire a friendly conversation or a stroll down memory lane. However, as the shift towards immediacy and technology dominate the home care industry, the already isolated patients feel more detached from the outside world.
Unfamiliar or uncomfortable with technology, home care clients often feel like they are competing for attention and care with a smartphone or a tablet in the hands of the care provider. They watch as their provider taps screen, completes a checklist, and does not make eye contact as often as the client wants. The technology feels cold, distant, and impersonal for the patient, causing an undesirable gap of much needed human interaction. More importantly, the home care worker could be missing important cues that may signal that additional concerns should be addressed.
Electronic Visit Verification, for example, is a powerful force in today’s home health care forum. Extraordinary time is currently dedicated to EVV and the 21st Century Cures Act that the human element in home care has been overlooked and underestimated. Albeit, Electronic Visit Verification would not be the module for home care workers to directly address or identify cues or concerns, but with the right platform, it can be a catalyst for training workers to ascertain patients’ psychosocial needs. Home care workers’ roles will continue to expand, most obviously as users of technology, but they must also be trained to identify clients’ emotional cues and concerns and modify care plans accordingly if barriers to care to exist.
A link between receptive psychological and social communication can lead to improved patient outcomes. According to a study entitled “Older Persons’ Worries Expressed During Home Care Visits: Exploring the Content of Cues and Concerns Identified by the Verona Coding Definitions of Emotional Sequences,” published in Patient Education and Counseling,“VRCoDES is a validated method for identifying patients’ expressions of unpleasant emotions in their communications with health personnel . . . Patients’ concerns and cues to emotional issues can be seen as a window of opportunity to capture the person’s perspective and experience of a situation.” While VRCoDES is a European model used to study health provider-patient communication sequences, the basic application to the U.S. home care setting is important.
In addition to following a care plan, monitoring changes in condition, identifying care gaps, and verifying basic services under the Cures Act, home care workers should have advanced training in verbal and non-verbal cues that signal specific patients’ worries concerning health, relationships, issues of aging and capacity, and the opportunity to communicate life narratives and value issues.When the home care worker can establish a reciprocal, social relationship with his/her patient, the quality of care is strengthened, and preventative measures can have a long-lasting impact. This process goes beyond a simple checklist of mood or feelings that are added to the patients’ electronic record.
The added human feature of eliciting verbal communication from a patient is proactive, moreover, it becomes crucial information transferred to the entire care team, and acts as an intervention tool that can reduce readmissions or decompensation events. Home care software platforms that incorporate such applications can leverage data to reduce FWA, increase the quality of care, and decrease readmission rates. Working in tandem for a common good, technology, and home care workers can create a relationship with a patient that is based on genuine care and concern expressed verbally and non-verbally.
About Sinq Technologies
Sinq’s collaborative software technology platform was built with a purpose in mind. Sinq’s Care Plan Transparency, Care Gap Management, EVV / EvS, and Change in Care Monitoring makes Sinq’s software stand out within the industry, and with Payors, Providers, and Plans. We can help you become compliant, but our expansive software offers long-term solutions for the betterment of your agency and clients. Call today for more information, a free demo, or a consultation at (847) 325-5007, or visit us at www.sinq.io
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