The Continuum Of Care Services

This paper will explain the components of the Home Health Care delivery system of continuum. The reader will be able to understand some of the services provided by the home health care system and how they fit into the continuum of care. It will give details on how the entity does or does not contribute to the overall management of healthcare resources.

The Continuum of Care is the variety of health care services provided to numerous individuals who are in need of it. All the various Long Term Care providers work as a unit, helping an individual handle their disability with various health care amenities accessible. The Continuum of Care, as stated in Long Term Care: Managing Across the Continuum (2010), is “comprehensive, integrated, and client-oriented”. All the services offered should be client-based and cater to the client’s needs and suitable care. The client’s should be able to obtain services when it is needed from the provider, making it comprehensive. All the different Long Term Care providers should be interconnected between one another, because their goal is all the same. Their goal is to care for the client’s needs. The Continuum of Care consists of: nursing facilities, sub acute care, assisted living, residential care, elderly housing, and a variety of community-based services (Pratt, 2010). All these different providers work together to care for the individuals within the health care industry, creating the continuum and making it integrated. The continuum has many positive attributes, along with many barriers. The range of barriers are: poor transitions from Long Term Care setting to setting for the clients, the continuum is reimbursement-driven, it is fragmented and uncoordinated, it is under staffed with medical professionals, and there are major language and literacy problems.

Long-term care is a variety of services that includes medical and non-medical care to people who have a chronic illness or disability. Long-term care helps meet health or personal needs. Most long-term care is to assist people with support services such as activities of daily living like dressing, bathing, eating, and using the bathroom. Long-term care can be provided at home, in the community, in assisted living or in nursing homes. Long-term care can be given at any age depending on

It takes a team approach to manage patient-care. As a FNP, and a provider for this

Throughout Unit 6 we reviewed the continuum of care in long-term care facilities and its many aspects. The continuum of care, also referred to as the delivery system of health care, is best defined as a full range of long-term care services increasing in level of acuity and complexity from one end to the other (PowerPoint). This delivery system is comprised of three substantial components. These components are the informal system, community based care, and the institutional system.

Preferred provider organizations offer flexibility in benefit design and allow patients flexibility to choose from a list of in-network providers for their care. Care provided in-network typically is discounted with out of network services resulting in higher out of pocket expenses to the patient (Hirth, Grazier, Chernew and Okeke, 2007). Clinically integrated networks are a more recently developed managed care structure. In this model, independent practitioners form a virtual network as a means of increasing capacity for contracting with payers of healthcare whether commercial insurance or for self-insured organizations. Physicians recognize advantages to collaborative contracting and the increase in coordinating care of patients through the network (Kaplan and Guest, 2012). Commercial insurance companies are looking to clinically integrated networks as another mechanism to control the costs of healthcare delivery. Accountable care organizations, as with clinically integrated networks, are fairly recent phenomenon with similar but more formalized characteristics. An accountable care organization is a structured network of healthcare entities which have united and are responsible for the health of an identified population. The accountable care organization shares the risk of meeting the health needs of

Diversity in Early Care and Education, you read two scenarios involving Baby A and Baby B and their interactions at home. Imagine a continuum that could be used to illustrate the degree of separateness each baby experiences in her home life. Think about where you would place each baby's experiences along this continuum and how this reflects each family's goals for their child. Then, briefly describe what it might be like for each baby to be placed in a child care environment at the opposite end of the separation continuum, including what her experiences might be like. Explain one or more ways in which a caregiver’s lack of awareness of, or insensitivity to, each baby’s home life could impact development and/or relationship-building.

Describe the methodology which supports the financial, ethical, legal, social support, and provider components of the care continuum.

With new direction that healthcare is taking Change in nursing practice is eminent to deliver care to a complex population from conception to death. Representations on how to practice nursing is expected to raise and transform. This new endeavor is the road to keep patient healthy. The relationship between the patient and care giver will go past actual occurrences of malady. The focus is on delivering care that is mainly focus on the needs of the patient in a continuum. In collaboration with everyone in the care team the patient is a unique person with unique needs who from one stage to another, meaning from the hospital to rehab, from rehab to home and to the community. Care for everyone in the same fashion each time without limitation. The continuum of care framework focuses on integrating the services provided to the client, rather than on the integration of service organizations.

“An Integrated Physician Model is the result of a series of partnership between hospitals and physician develop overtime” (Harrison, 2016). Primarily, it is a joint venture that has become many joint ventures. In addition, all of this joint ventures are connected through congruent goals, and that is to provide different level of care to all the patients. Integrated physician model also organizing themselves to improve the cost and quality by operating under a clinical guideline. This could include acute care hospital, home care, nursing homes, affiliated medical group, primary care clinics, employed physician and any independent medical groups.

Organizational Structure Organizational structure can be defined as a social unit of people, systemically structured and managed to meet a need or pursue collective goals on a continuing basis. My organizational structure consists of management that determines the positions and delegate roles, responsibility to carry out defined task. On a daily basis, there is a charge nurse that supervises the entire unit and makes adequate assignments for each member of the nursing staff. The charge nurse can also be used as a resource in any event that is questionable to the nurse, patient and the family members. Our organizational structures promote teamwork, improve communication and provide quality care.

Each factor of the continuum helps transition the patient from one level of service to the next. The doctor referral for future treatment in a hospital, or the doctor overseeing treatment in an LTC facility can help the patient transition better and have a better quality of life. Each part of the continuum plays a part in the future health of the patient.

Care coordination within health care systems ensures the client of an effective and short stay. Care coordination refers to the coordination between and among professional teams that serve valuable roles involved in providing care to clients. Different disciplines of health care professionals include nursing, medicine, case management, pharmacy, nutrition, social work, and allied health professionals, such as speech therapists and physical therapists. They are found in all health care delivery systems and are extremely effective when the focus is strictly on the needs of the client. Interprofessional teams are valuable because each health care professional has specialized knowledge and skills so that health care plans are determined with

The Chronic Care Model (CCM) is an excellent tool that has been implemented among most of the international health policies in developed countries (Singh and Ham, 2006; Kennedy et al., 2007). It is developed by Wagner (1998), which provides a structural framework that guides clinical quality initiatives in improving the care in managing people with LTCs (Coleman et al., 2009). One of the key principles of this model is by promoting safe and high-quality care that is consistent with the research evidence and patients’ preferences (Wagner, 1998). This is to empower individuals to manage their health through support from the healthcare team in facilitating the effectiveness of care (Randall and

The organizational structure is as important as culture for health organizational to provide best care to patients. According to Glickman, Baggett, Krubert, Peterson, and Schulman, (2008) "Organizational design is a formal, guided process for integrating the people, information, and technology of an organization, and serves as a key structural element that allows corporations to maximize value by matching their corporate design to overall strategy." It is really hard for large organizations to provide high quality of care when the organization structure is not set properly. Most large health organization have their work divided into small tasks and each employee is responsible for his or her duties. As I have discussed earlier communication is major problem in health organization that leads to many medical errors. Without clear communication between