title: Planning for quality in the home care system.
abstract: The cycle of quality planning includes five steps needed to establish a home care quality program. These include commitment, development, communication, implementation, and evaluation of a workable quality of care strategy. Tools available as control mechanisms when implementing the system are patient rights, home evaluation, documentation of care, and performance evaluation. Upon patient discharge, an entire case is reviewed and summarized for future reference and audit. In approaching the challenge of quality care, home care management must be aware that quality permeates every aspect of operations and is not confined to the functional domain of a committee or to the administrative bounds of a specific program. Quality is an overall measure of performance and should be respected as such at all levels of the organization. A summary list of guidelines for enforcing quality in home health care operations is presented in Figure 3, page 251. This figure, as with other suggestions presented in this article, reinforces the same general message: articulate, communicate, and evaluate. Cost-effective, high-quality home health care is becoming significantly more desirable as the number of home health agencies rises and the potential for prospective payment by the federal and state programs and the health maintenance organization concept expand. In addition, the prospect of the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Hospitals' developing an accreditation program for all home health care agencies offers the opportunity to have baseline data for building and measuring QA.
mesh_terms: D002140:California; D003142:Communication; D004650:Employee Performance Appraisal; D004777:Environment; D006040:Goals; D006699:Home Care Services / Q000592:standards*; D006801:Humans; D007373:Interinstitutional Relations; D009730:Nursing Assessment; D010344:Patient Advocacy; D011785:Quality Assurance, Health Care