04 Sep 2017 Conway Regional HomeCare achieves national award

Conway Regional HomeCare is a winner of the 2016 Strategic Healthcare Programs (SHP) Best Premier Performer award for overall patient satisfaction. The home health staff achieved this prestigious award by ranking in the top 5 percent of home health agencies in the SHP’s national HHCAHPS survey benchmark for overall satisfaction. 

The award reflects consistently high scores in patient satisfaction by the HomeCare staff.  This is the first year for Conway Regional to achieve the SHP Best Patient Satisfaction Award, which is based on survey responses received from patients cared for by Conway Regional HomeCare in 2016. SHP is a national benchmarking organization that compiles and analyzes data that is reported to Medicare.

“It is always a team effort of our nurses, therapists, aides and including the office staff,” said HomeCare Director Ruth Ann Fisher, RN.

“When a patient calls in, we want them to know that customer service is job one.”

The Conway Regional HomeCare team consists of 25 full-time and part-time home health professionals.

“It’s a calling. We have purchased groceries for the poor, sat with the dying, cried with families,” said Joyce Pennington, RN, a HomeCare staff nurse. “We are a team that helps one another… you have to have that to be successful.”  She recalls being thanked by physicians for helping find solutions to a patient health issue as well as receiving the gratitude of numerous families.

Nancy Boyds of Mount Vernon credits Pennington for getting her through three difficult surgical procedures over several years. “I’ve had a lot of medical problems and I have seen a lot of nurses, but she is the best. After I met her the first time, I asked to see Joyce the next two times. Joyce and I became real close friends and she helped me through all of it.”

Boyds added, “I had lots of questions and she would get answers for me and help me understand what was going on. Sometimes there were things that I had been doing that were working against me. The physical therapy staff was also precious. They got me on my feet after I had trouble moving.”

With a case load of 20 to 25 patients per week, Pennington says the HomeCare staff has to be prepared to take care of patients across an age range that spans from infants to 100-year-old people.  Duties can include home inspections, giving medicine, educating patients about which foods can increase health problems, detecting hazards in the home and taking vital signs. “We educate; we teach them safety in their homes,” said Pennington. “They are comfortable with us.”

Winners are ranked by an analysis of publicly available performance measures of patient experience (Home Health CAHPS®). In order to be considered, an agency must be Medicare-certified and have data for at least one outcome in Home Health Compare. 

The Conway Regional HomeCare staff has also achieved the top 500 HomeCare Elite award over the last six years. More than 9,500 home health agencies participate in the national HomeCare Elite rankings.