Helping hands of Grand Lake
Grand Lake Health celebrates Home Care and Hospice Month in November
November is Home Care and Hospice Month and the home care and hospice community honor the millions of nurses, home care aides, therapists and social workers who play a pivotal role and make a remarkable different for patients and families they serve.
“We want the community to understand what we do for people in their homes and what our services are all about,” said Loraine Bernard, RN, and the manager for Grand Lake Home Health & Hospice.
Grand Lake Health’s hospice and home care services are led by Dr. Robert Keighley, who has 33 years of experience in the medical field.
“A lot of home health starts in the acute care in the hospital and we’re trying to transition them from hospital to home. We try to keep the patients home and tend to whatever needs they may have,” said Keighley. “We can do physical therapy, wound care, respiratory treatments. Basically some of the similar treatments that you can do in the hospital, you can do in the home. We’re trying to do it where maybe family can’t help.”
Keighley said that the Grand Lake Health System has offered hospice services for about 14 years now.
“We saw there was a definite need,” he said. “I ran the tumor board for a number of years over here. With that, I got asked to come on board at the discussion meetings to see what was going on. I can say when we started, we probably had maybe two or three patients a month and then it grew to 15 to 20. I think now we’re consistently running 20 to 25 a month. I think the service has definitely been there and grown.”
Keighley plays a role when coordinating with patient’s family doctors.
“There are patients that come from out of the area and maybe don’t have primary care and I’ll assume the lead role as far as overseeing the medications, etc., but basically it’s just if there’s medication problems, if there’s a physical problem, that’s where my support comes in,” he said.
Hospice is all about endof-life care for patients and Grand Lake’s staff is a passionate one.
“It kind of started just as
an idea, but what we’ve seen is the nursing staff grow to where it’s a passion for them. We’re fortunate. We have four certified hospice nurses now,” said Keighley. “I think it’s rewarding for them because you’re doing exactly what you want to do as a nurse. You want to provide comfort to the patient and the family. Even though there may be a dying process, it’s that patient’s comfort they look that and I think they can look back and say, ‘Hey, I accomplished a goal. That patient was comfortable. They didn’t suffer. The family did well.’”
The hospice and home health staff meet every two weeks to go over each patient and determine the right course for them.
“All the nursing staff comes in, the clergy’s here, I’m here, social services is here and we discuss each patient,” said Keighley. “With that, I think it does a wonderful thing by picking up some wants and needs and maybe some troubled areas that we can kind of move forward on. Bob Sweeney is here now, but we’ve had some excellent pastoral help over the years. It just helps the family and that’s a need they really want.”
Sarah Seitz, an RN and one of the clinical coordinators for Grand Lake Hospice, said there are requirements that need to be met when electing the benefit of hospice.
“Initially, at times, it is a referral service from a physician that we’ve been contacted and they’re looking at end of life care or hospice support. That is something we can handle internally,” she said. “To be electing that hospice benefit, you have to meet the requirements so we can help lead the way with physicians when we get those calls.”
Seitz said she receives many calls from families who have questions about what they can do to help throughout the process.
“Maybe they’ve been given this troubled diagnosis and attempted a treatment and things aren’t going in that direction and they’re looking more to hospice and support. Our care can help be initiated at that point,” she said. “Then we can have discussion with the family physician. I always have direct conversation with Dr. Keighley regarding the disease progression and what we’re seeing.”
A hospice nurse can be sent out to the home of a patient to check how they’re doing with daily activities.
“Our philosophy is to definitely manage pain symptoms of any type. Pain, shortness of breath, nausea, constipation and looking at that whole person,” she said. “At that point, we can move forward with the admission process if the family is ready to make that change and we’ll help guide them through those next steps. That’s when we send in a hospice nurse and we initiate that plan of care.”
Jane Steinemann, one of the RNs for the Home Health, Hospice and Palliative Care, said it’s important for them to individualize each patient’s plan of care.
“Everybody likes their own thing at that time in life. It’s such a special time. So we really offer them a lot and then they pick and choose. We have nursing, nursing aides that can help with personal care, music therapy, massage therapy, social services, pastoral. That’s very individualized and we just really get into the details of that patient’s story,” she said. “We try to make those weeks, months or whatever time we have, as special as possible.
We can’t change the outcome of the disease, but we can certainly change the journey.”
Julie Albert, clinical coordinator for Grand Lake Home Health, explained what the home health’s mission is.
“Our goal is to help acute care patients that come from the hospital to get better. We watch them as they get home to better get therapy in there,” said Albert. “Typically, our process is 2-4 weeks and we would stay with the patient’s home and just do education, assessments, vital signs, report to the doctor— that sort of thing. Our goal is to just get that patient better.”
Grand Lake Home Health also has a fivestar rating awarded to them by Medicare.
“Since they started the star ratings, our home health department has been, and remains, a 5-star agency. You can go to Medicare. gov for home health compare and compare our agency with other agencies,” said Albert.
Medicare doesn’t use a star rating system for hospice but Albert said that the department has been above local, state and national competitors for both quality measures and patient satisfaction scoring. “We’re just so proud of that,” she said.