nurse hugging patient

Comprehensive Home Care Nursing (HCN)

Our professional home care nursing services can be categorized as regular and complex home health care nursing services based on the client’s acuity. are provided to a person who requires more continuous care beyond the scope of what personal care assistance (PCA) and home health aide (HHA) services can provide.

HCN services are based on an assessment of the person’s medical/health care needs beyond home health aide/PCA services and are provided in the person’s place of residence or in the community. All services are provided according to the recipient’s written plan of care or service plan.

Regular HCN covers the following activities:

  • Assessments and interventions needed by a person who is considered stable but has episodes of instability that are not immediately life-threatening.
  • Nursing observation, monitoring, assessment and evaluation of a person’s mental and physical health status to determine appropriate interventions that will maintain, improve the person’s health status, or restore optimal health. This may be covered when the likelihood of a change in condition requires nursing personnel to identify and evaluate the need for possible modification of treatment or initiation of additional medical procedures until the recipient’s treatment regimen is stabilized.
  • Perform procedure that requires substantial and specialized nursing skill, such as setting up a plan of care, sterile wound dressing, sterile catheter insertion, ostomy care, intravenous therapy, intramuscular injections, administering medication, pain control, and other health support.
  • Continuous or intermittent home visits to initiate and complete professional nursing tasks based on a recipient’s need for service.
  • Teaching and training. Examples include, teaching self-administration of injectable medications or a complex range of medications; teaching a newly diagnosed diabetic person or caregiver on all aspects of diabetic management; teaching self-catheterization or bowel or bladder training.
  • Postpartum visits to new mothers and their newborn infants. The RN must provide parent education, assistance and training in breast and bottle feeding and conduct any necessary and appropriate clinical tests.
  • Nursing visits for a recipient residing in an Intermediate Care Facility/Developmentally Disabled facility (ICF/DD) to prevent admission to a hospital or nursing facility.
  • Venipuncture from a peripheral site.

Complex Home Care Nursing (HCN) covers the following activities:

Complex HCN covers all the regular HCN activities listed above, in addition to life-sustaining interventions that reduce the risk of long-term injury or death for people who meet at least one of the following requirements:

  • The person requires life-sustaining interventions to reduce the risk of long-term injury or death.
  • Patients with tracheostomy
  • Patients on ventilator
  • The person is dependent on a ventilator for life support for at least six hours a day and is expected tobe or has been dependent for at least 30 consecutive days.
  • Spinal Cord Injury/Acquired Brain Injury
  • Eating Assistance for Clients with Complicating Eating Problems (i.e. difficulty swallowing recurrent lung aspirations or requiring the use of a tube parenteral or intravenous instruments)
  • Patients with neuromuscular diseases
  • Bedridden patients needing continuous hands-on, transfer, hospice related services, etc.
nurse assisting patient