Primaris Press Release
| For immediate release: July 29, 2008 |
Contact: Matt Heger Primaris Communications Department (800) 735-6776, Ext. 136 |
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Health care fun and games?
St. Joseph home health agency methods go statewide
By Natalie Fieleke
ST. JOSEPH, Mo.—Who says improving health care can't be fun and games?
Not sisters Lynn Stoll-Weaver and Dawn Brown, who creatively engage the staff at Homeward Bound Health Agency in St. Joseph, Mo. and, as a result, benefit their patients.
Stoll-Weaver and Brown, both registered nurses, are co-administrators of the agency, which they opened together in 2002. Coming up with ways to engage staff in education can sometimes be a struggle, but Stoll-Weaver and Brown have found a way to create a buzz among their staff through an innovative game styled after the television classic Jeopardy.
Stoll-Weaver came up with the idea while attending a home health outcomes convention and quickly implemented it at her own agency. She purchased a game board and began involving both clinical and non-clinical staff in brainstorming categories and questions. The first round of Home Health Jeopardy centered on OASIS questions with tropical prizes, such as coconut-scented candles, awarded to winners.
Questions ranged from the clinical (“How would you rate a patient on MO700- ambulation/locomotion who is always unsteady?”) to the impossible (“What’s the terminal velocity of a swallow?”).
“The game is a fun way to get the education across where everybody is absorbing it, but they just don’t know it,” Stoll-Weaver says.
Now that Jeopardy has become a regular feature at monthly staff meetings, administrators are taking the learning process a few steps further to reinforce the knowledge. Jeopardy questions and answers are posted as “Porcelain Pearls” or “Potty Grams” in a location all staff are bound to frequent at some point during their day – the restroom stalls.
Stoll-Weaver can tell this fun approach is getting staff more excited about providing better care for patients.
“I think it’s probably true that people recall this information more easily,” Stoll-Weaver says. “I’m hearing a lot more talk about it, and that’s exciting for me to see as a manager.”
Improving the quality of care while carefully monitoring patient satisfaction is always at the forefront, and Homeward Bound’s efforts seem to be paying off. They survey all post-discharge patients and post the surveys which collectively have a 98.9 percent overall satisfaction rating on the “kudos board” at the front of the office.
But patients aren’t only satisfied with the service, they’re also physically benefiting from it. According to Medicare data from the past three years, more than half of Homeward Bound patients have become better able to accurately manage their oral medications.
More patients have also been able to stay in their homes, avoiding unnecessary hospitalization with improved assessment and monitoring on the part of Homeward Bound staff.
Homeward Bound and Primaris, the state’s Medicare Quality Improvement Organization, took the game statewide. By spreading it to home health agencies across Missouri, the two organizations hope that others will be able to use the game to improve health care.
It may be fun and games, but it leaves a serious impact.
About Primaris
Primaris is a nonprofit, health care consulting firm and contracts with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to serve as the Quality Improvement Organization for Missouri. Primaris’ mission is to improve health care delivery and outcomes by promoting excellence, advancing knowledge and developing innovative solutions for physicians, other providers, businesses, government, patients and consumers.
Online at www.primaris.org.
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Editor’s Note: Primaris' rendition of Home Health Jeopardy is available as a PowerPoint file on the Primaris Web site. The PowerPoint can also be ordered, free of charge.