Home Health Care Field Research Articles

Practical guidelines to Americans with Disabilities Act compliance

The enactment of the Americans with Disabilities Act has brought national attention to the issue of disability-related discrimination in the work place. This article outlines the basic parameters of the act and suggests practical guidelines for monitoring compliance within the home health care field.

A Review Process for a Hospital at Home

The field of home health care is the focus of much attention as alternatives to institutionalization are sought. As a result, many types of organizations are now providing home care, health or otherwise, without the guidance of national standards similar to those found in accreditation models for care in an institutional setting. So that stakeholders in New Brunswick can be assured of the quality of the service it provides, the Extra-Mural Hospital has embarked upon the development of a review process which will, to some extent, follow established accreditation models.

Strategies for Increasing Referrals for Occupational Therapy in Home Health Care

The paucity of home health care referrals for occupational therapy led us to develop an educational approach to increase both the referral sources and the number of referrals to occupational therapy. With a consistent effort to exercise clearly identified strategies, the occupational therapy referrals at the Visiting Nurse Association of Porter County, Indiana, increased threefold from the number of referrals at the same time last year. The greater staff awareness of the need for occupational therapy in home health care requires occupational therapists to continually prevent old nonreferring habits from reemerging and to orient and educate new staff members as they enter the home health care field.

Role divergence and complexity in gerontological home care.

This study documents high levels of role complexity and functional overlap in the field of home health care. Personnel perform a wide range of "professional/organizational" and "community/familial" service functions though the emphasis is on the delivery of a battery of pseudo family-like tasks. The importance of a familial orientation does not significantly decline when controlling for length of employment or organizational rationality. Role orientation is, however, significantly associated with a worker's chronological age. Results lead to program planning recommendations meant to influence staff training paradigms in home health care.