Safety Goals

1. Identify patients correctly
2. Use medicines safely
3. Prevent infection
4. Prevent patients from falling
5. Identify patient safety risks

 While this is especially crucial for hospitals or other institutional settings with multiple patients in the same building, proper patient identification processes are also important for in-home care.  Advance Home Care identifies each client and plan of care by name and their Patient ID number, and a client photo is also sometimes added to files for an additional measure of identification. Our professional caregivers know to check for these items to make sure they are performing the right tasks for the right person. The same identification steps are taken when documenting notes on client files. This is important for creating an accurate client history as well as communicating changes in condition to the Advance Home Care Registered Nurse Director of Nursing. 

Advance Home Care assists many of our clients with medication management from oversight and reminders to administration and follows The Joint Commission’s National Patient Safety Goals standard for medicines very closely. During the initial new client assessment, Advance Home Care Registered Nurse conducts a detailed review of all medications as part of creating a unique plan of care, noting any potential interactions or high-risk medicines, such as insulin, to be handled following proper protocol. A medication review is performed every 60 days for skilled care clients and every 90 days for personal care clients to ensure the plan of care is current. An accurate medication history is important for all clients because it allows us to carefully monitor how medications can affect everyday life. For example, if a client is on blood thinners, excessive bleeding or bruising may indicate a change of condition and require prompt attention. 

 Germs are everywhere—even in your own home—so one of the most important ways we prevent infection is through proper hand-washing techniques and frequency. We train and competency test all caregivers on proper hand-washing. During supervisory visits, a Registered Nurse observes and documents whether caregivers meet the techniques and frequency standards in clients’ homes. We track the data from these observations as part of our brand-wide safety and quality measures, and they are a performance-improvement indicator for Joint Commission accreditation.
Another important aspect of infection prevention is being mindful not to bring in new germs into a client’s home. Sometimes, our care professionals may visit more than one client in a day, so they properly clean equipment or medical bags they bring from home to home. We also track and trend immunizations for employees to encourage our staff to stay healthy and avoid unintentional infection transmission to a client. 

 As part of our comprehensive initial visit, a Registered Nurse conducts an assessment of health-related fall risk and uses her professional analysis to create the appropriate approach to care and reducing those risks. We perform this unique level of assessment at least every 6 months for companion-care clients, every 90 days for personal-care clients, and every 60 days for skilled-care clients. Our professional caregivers also review a home safety checklist for environmental fall risks in the home and provide the results to family members. We even have a special home safety checklist for clients living with dementia who have special fall-risk considerations. We track and trend falls, those that occur with or without Advance Home Care caregiver present, and use the data to identify opportunities to update caregiver training or reevaluate care protocols or client equipment needs.