Does your agency team always work together as a team as they operate and compete in the marketplace?

When Home Health Agency (HHA) management encourages team participation to do the agency’s work, encourages the open exchange of knowledge and information- and also places its emphasis on becoming an adherent to this principle, it is thereby accepting the challenge of becoming one of the brightest and best–a Highly Effective Home Health Agency.  This aim is to accept and continuously improve upon adoption of the positive virtues of ‘shared vision’, systems thinking’, ‘personal mastery’ and ‘team learning’, all principles of a “Learning Organization”, a concept first introduced by Dr. Peter Senge at MIT in 1991. ¹

Knowledge Sharing is a competitive advantage

By sharing knowledge, the home health team gets stronger and better decisions are made because there is a wealth of collective intelligence and experience on the team. Operating a HHA is a complex enterprise, requiring practical experience and specialized knowledge. There are many specialized bits of information that must be mastered in order to become a Highly Effective Home Health Agency. The areas and specialties of HHA knowledge are varied and have great depth and skill involved.

The knowledge and skills necessary to achieving mastery as a HHA MVP include:

• The peculiarities of all variations of Medicare coding, requiring a thorough knowledge and understanding of HCPC and all other types of governmental specialized code
• Skilled nurses and therapists charting—ICD 9-10 and all the skills of nurses
• Scheduling for efficient work across the agency
• Quality, caring patient relationship building and maintenance
• Accurate and precise Medicare billing and the general regulatory and insurers framework
• The ways that patient episodes can be documented and can completed so as to properly bill Medicare for the optimum billing and regulatory standard
• Proper and compliant workflow methodology
• Specialized and highly skilled mastery of the particular software platform being utilized to accomplish the work in the agency (yes, Axxess Agencycore is the best software platform in the US for the management of a HHA!)

Knowledge is your most valuable asset

Shared, facilitative learning helps promote the growth and business continuity of the organization, so when a team member is unavailable for any reason, other members can easily step in and function effectively and in the proper context. The shared knowledge of the varied disciplines represents expertise that can increase in value when shared among all members of the organization, members of all levels in the agency. Knowledge may be your most valuable asset to your HHA. In fact, technical and HHA specific knowledge in the minds of those who hold the greatest amount of knowledge in the agency, when openly and freely taught/shared with all the staff, is a great leap forward towards becoming highly effective as an agency in the competitive marketplace.

Axxess practices the principles and attests to their value

Axxess Healthcare Consult, as an organization believes that there is great wisdom in adoption of “Learning Organization” principles. A primary value of learning organizations—is that all its members actively pursue “Personal Mastery” in their field, whether it be as an administrator, a biller, an aide, a nurse or a therapist. It is a principle of “Continuous Improvement”. This is how we become ‘craftsmen’ or ‘artisans’ with mastery in our chosen profession. In fact, those who are intentional about training and guiding their staffers of all the disciplines to learn, learn and learn some more, with the goal of becoming Masters and promoting the achievement of Mastery for all employees in their fields of endeavor themselves, are actually taking positive steps toward achieving the worthy goal of becoming a Highly Effective Home Health Agency. This is why we at Axxess actively practice the standards of a “Learning Organization” and stress that our clients adapt this methodology of operation as well.

These agencies are compelling workplaces

The Highly Effective Home Health Agencies that are the winners in their marketplace are compelling places to work. Attrition is lowered. People want to grow and learn within a cohesive team—and thus will tend to be admired and respected in their communities and in their marketplace. These agencies are those that adopt and promote a shared vision and a standard operating model of repeated and systematic corporate learning, and over time they become a true “Learning Organization”. Our advice is to seek to eliminate withholding of valuable knowledge, and adopt the tenets of a “Learning Organization”.

The benefits are many and include the following:

• Eventual reduction of the attrition –the dreaded high turnover of employees
• Improvements in your agency’s profitability
• The quality of its regulatory compliance
• Excellence of care in all its services to its patients

Axxess will be sharing more information about becoming a Highly Effective Home Health Agency over the next few months as we move towards our upcoming Administrator Seminar Series, being offered in four locations across the country: in McAllen, Houston, and Dallas, TX. and Ontario,CA.  Potentially, in early summer/late spring-we may be presenting the teaching series in the Chicago area. Go to https://axxessconsult.com/seminars for more information.

¹Citing: “The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization”, Dr. Peter Senge, 1991.