Continuing education gives therapists the opportunity to learn new skills, review legalities and requirements, and pick the brains of some of healthcare’s leading experts. For the best in home health CEU courses, look no further than MedBridge Education. Their vast library of continuing education features an array of topics geared specifically for the home health setting.
Whether you just started out in home health or you’re a seasoned clinician, these 4 home health CEU courses will help you provide top-notch care everywhere you go.
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4 Home Health CEU Courses for Physical Therapists
Together, these home health CEU courses can amount to 5 hours of CEU credit, depending on your state’s requirements. They’re all available online through a subscription to MedBridge Education. And if you’re new to MedBridge, take a moment to read my review of this online education platform!
Care and Hospice QAPI: Root Cause Analysis by Georgia Hockenjos
QAPI stands for Quality Assurance and Performance Improvement, two components of a successful quality management system. This course is just 42 minutes of run time, but its insights into patient care can have a lasting impact on your home health career.
CEU credit: 1 hour*
Instructor: Georgia Hockenjos has over 40 years’ experience in home health, from nursing to management to consulting.
Overview: QAPI is not just a topic for healthcare management. Therapists can play a crucial role in ensuring all the components of QAPI work together for high-quality patient care. In this course, instructor Hockenjos lays out the 5 standards of QAPI:
- Program Scope
- Program Activities
- Performance Improvement Projects
- Program Data
- Executive Responsibilities
With this foundation set, Hockenjos explains Root Cause Analysis or RCA, a method specifically used to identify causes behind problems that are keeping the home health organization from running optimally. Throughout the course, Hockenjos draws on her own vast experience in the home health setting. She retells an organizational case study in the final chapter to help better contextualize the role of RCA in QAPI.
Comprehensive Home Care Assessment by Tina Marelli and Kim Corral
Home care assessments are the evaluations you perform in the patient’s home to help determine their plan of care. Instructors Marelli and Corral offer tips on how to improve your home care assessment, presented in two parts: Key Elements & Requirements and Data Review & Care Planning.
Part 1: Key Elements & Requirements CEU Credit: .75–1 hour*
Part 2: Data Review & Care Planning CEU Credit: Part 2: 1 hour*
Instructors: Together these two nurses have over 60 years’ combined experience in home health—from clinical work to management and consulting. They both offer several courses on MedBridge specializing in home health.
Overview: In the first course of this two-part series, instructors Marelli and Corral focus on the “what” of a comprehensive home care assessment, using the Medicare glossary to define and explain all the elements required. The second course is focused on the “how”: ways you as the clinician can collect more accurate information to create a more efficacious care plan. With their expertise in patient management, Marelli and Corral use real-life examples to help you better contextualize the skills they’ve honed in home health. After this two-part course, you’ll better understand how to make your home care assessments more comprehensive and effective—for you and the patient as well as for the home care organization you represent.
Functional Scales and Tools for Rehabilitation by Michelle Camicia
Although this course is led by a nurse, the information directly applies to therapists in a home health setting—or any setting. A detailed knowledge of available assessment tools is valuable intel you can apply no matter where you serve as a clinician.
CEU Credit: 1 hour*
Instructor: As director of operations for Kaiser Foundation Rehabilitation Center, Camicia is one of the nation’s top leaders overseeing rehabilitation care. Her experience as a nurse and innovation as a researcher further qualify the many rehabilitation-related courses she’s taught on Medbridge.
Overview: In the home health setting, functional scales and tools can help clinicians assess their patient’s needs. For this brief, 49-minute course, instructor Camicia presents several such tools, explaining not only how they work but when to use which. The scales and tools featured in this course include the following: the Modified Rankin Scale (mRS), the Functional Independence Measure (FIM), the Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS), and the Continuity Assessment Record and Evaluation tool (CARE) for post-acute care. These tools can influence not only your assessment but also your patient’s rehabilitation outcomes and care delivery. The right tools make all the difference!
Defensible Documentation in Home Health: Fundamental Concepts by Diana (Dee) Kornetti and Cindy Krafft
One of the biggest headaches of home health physical therapy is the documentation; it’s long, complex, and frequently audited. In this 45-minute course, instructors Cornetti and Krafft offer tangible solutions for writing defensible documentation that satisfies all requirements.
CEU credit: 1 hour*
Instructors: These two PTs are the lead consultants for Kornetti & Krafft Health Care Solutions, providing training and education to home health clinicians nationwide.
Overview: Home health documentation can be long and arduous, but it doesn’t have to be an enigma. In this fundamentals course, the instructors break open the reason for documentation requirements, beginning with the process behind external audits. They then explain how to write your documentation to be “defensible,” showing that the treatment you provided was skilled, reasonable, and necessary. You’ll come away with new strategies for complying with documentation expectations related to coverage and qualifying criteria.
*CEU credit hour is contingent on individual state requirements. Please check your state’s practice act to determine if each course qualifies for CEU credit.
Write Better Documentation—the Easy Way
If Kornetti and Krafft’s course didn’t already drive home this point, writing defensible documentation is one of the most important skills you can master as a home health physical therapist. With thorough, accurate documentation that reflects your skilled care, you can better defend your patient’s need for therapy and help secure their progress.
But writing doesn’t come naturally to many of us therapists. After all, it’s not a love of writing that inspired us to become PTs. Documentation, while important, can levy a burdensome tax of time and mental stress on the therapist. That’s why I created home health documentation templates. These cheat-sheets provide a framework for writing defensible documentation without the writer’s block.
With a template as your guide, you can complete documentation by simply adjusting the language of my example sentences and filling the blanks to reflect the individualized care you provided. Without having to think up every word every time for every patient, you’ll fly through your notes.
My home health documentation templates cover every aspect of home health documentation: evaluation notes, assessment phrases, treatment note examples, discharge summaries, and more. Don’t wait to improve your notes and cut down the time you spend writing them. Download these templates today!
