HealthSciences Partners With Pennsylvania Homecare Association in  Chronic Care Initiative

The Pennsylvania Homecare Association (PAHA) and HealthSciences Institute are collaborating to deliver the Chronic Care Professional (CCP) certification and staff accreditation program to Pennsylvania’s home health care agencies. The CCP program will support PAHA’s new statewide Chronic Care Initiative. “The CCP program builds on the strengths of the homecare industry,” said PAHA Executive Director Vicki Hoak. “Obtaining this certification brings further validation of what we already know—homecare clinicians are providing exceptional management, education and coaching for chronically ill patients.” Clinicians at the VNA of Greater Philadelphia have already been certified through the program, including Joan K. Raftery, RN, Chronic Care Case Manager. “The principles I learned through my Chronic Care Professional certification training afforded me the ability to develop and implement an effective plan of care for a high-risk, long-term patient with significant changes in her health status,” said Raftery. “Application of the STEEEP (safety, timeliness, effectiveness, efficiency, equitability, patient centeredness) framework, a newly learned model, provided me with the skills to lead the patient’s multidisciplinary case conference to formulate a best practice intervention plan to achieve positive patient outcomes.” Dr. Blake Andersen, President and CEO of HealthSciences Institute, added, “Homecare providers are on the front-line of chronic care. They are uniquely poised to support physicians in evidence-based patient care and treatment adherence, early identification and management of disease-related complications, and address critical self-care and lifestyle factors that drive avoidable hospitalization and loss of independence.”

HealthSciences Institute, through the national Partners in Improvement program, is providing partial tuition waivers to PAHA members. Technical support is also being offered to PAHA in support of the wider Pennsylvania State Chronic Care Initiative. According to Pennsylvania Governor Edward Rendell, “The present system of providing health care was designed to treat acute illness, not control chronic diseases. In the face of rising levels of chronic disease and spiraling health care costs; governments, businesses, insurance companies and Pennsylvania families have, out of necessity, chosen to limit health care services, benefits and visits as a way to cut cost. Evidence is mounting around the country that exactly the opposite approach to chronic disease is more successful. Early, consistent and persistent health care intervention for those with chronic disease will likely be more cost-effective and will dramatically improve the quality of life for anyone with chronic disease.” HealthSciences Institute has previously partnered with state agencies and provider associations in states including Minnesota, Wisconsin, Vermont and Montana—where CCP staff accreditation is required for all contractors in that state’s Medicaid Disease Management program. “The Institute of Medicine and the World Health Organization have emphasized that chronic care is a new model of care that requires new competencies. And the research shows that clinicians who are prepared in evidence-based chronic care approaches and interventions deliver better patient and cost outcomes than those are aren’t. If we don’t prepare clinicians in these highly effective new skills, we are missing one of our most cost effective strategies for improving chronic care,” added Dr. Andersen.

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