Medical Home Meeting: December 12, 2012

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December 12, 2012- During our December meeting of the Medical Home Work Group for Children with Special Needs in Western Massachusetts, we heard from two excellent children’s service agencies, the local Loving Care Agency of Springfield, Massachusetts, and the national Make-A-Wish Foundation.

Patricia Flink, area director from Loving Care Agency, began the meeting with a presentation of the pediatric nursing services that Loving Care provides special needs children. The agency, located at 205 Roosevelt Avenue, Springfield MA, provides home health and private-duty nursing care for children, including services for G-tubes, tracheostomy, and ventilator care. As well, intermittent skilled nursing visits are available, and services provided by Loving Care must be associated with a skilled nursing need.

Flink explained the importance that all nurses have high-quality pediatric training, which the agency provides. All nurses undergo pediatric preparatory courses with the goal that nurses will be equipped to teach families to care for their special needs children in areas such as diabetes, tracheostomy, G-tube care, and more.

As well, the agency provides unique transitional assistance for children moving from a facility to home. A “transitional team” coordinates with hospitals and facilities to customize the child’s services, and the Loving Care nurses assist families with adapting to new equipment, such as ventilators, in the home. Loving Care’s clinical managers, who are also pediatric nurses, help with insurance and maintaining quality of service. All insurance plans are accepted by Loving Care Agency. For more information, please visit the agency’s website.

Our second presenter, Julie Able from the Make-A-Wish Foundation, spoke about the fantastic gifts that the Foundation bestows upon many children with critical medical conditions. Although it is not necessary that the child’s condition be terminal, the condition must be progressive, degenerative, or malignant in nature. As well, a medical diagnosis and a doctor’s recommendation are required. For more information on this wonderful program, please visit the Make-A-Wish Foundation website.

In other news, uur Medical Home group sponsored a successful holiday event on December 18 at Shriner’s Hospital for Children which over 100 children and family members attended! We are grateful for our sponsors, THOM Early Intervention and Safe Kids of Western MA.

Medical Home Meeting: November 14, 2012

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November 14, 2012- The November meeting of the Medical Home Work Group for Children with Special Needs in Western Massachusetts provided us with an opportunity to discuss two vital local resources for children with special healthcare needs. Presentations by therapists from Weldon Rehabilitation of Mercy Medical Center and Greg Klein-Hertzel from Centrus Premier Home Care stimulated more lively discussion around the healthcare issues that children with special needs are facing.

First, several therapists from Weldon Rehabilitation, of Mercy Medical Center, and offered through the Sisters of Providence Health System, spoke about their agency, which offers many therapies and services to individuals coping with complex medical conditions. The therapists spoke about the initial processes for beginning care at Weldon, which consist of a one to two hour evaluation for speech therapies and a one hour evaluation for physical therapies. Weldon Rehabilitation works with children from birth through adolescence, and with patients struggling with many issues ranging from integration disorders to traumatic brain injuries.

Weldon Rehabilitation offers some important conveniences, such as allowing patients to maintain their own weekly time slots for visits, and coordinating therapies to reduce the amount of trips a family needs to make for therapy visits. The therapists explained that all insurances are accepted at Weldon Rehabilitation. A topic of interest to our group, however, revolved around the issue that in order to be covered by insurance, families need to associate the services they are receiving with a medical diagnosis, and not a developmental delay.

The therapists also described some of the fun and unusual therapeutic activities they offer patients, such as social communication groups and animal-assisted therapies. Weldon Rehabilitation makes annual trips to the zoo at Forest Park in Springfield and offers hip therapy activities with horses. These compelling rehabilitation services are clearly very valuable to young people coping with complex healthcare needs in the Springfield area!

Our second presenter, Greg Klein-Hertzel from Centrus Premier Home Care, spoke about the services that this home care company offers individuals of all ages with special health care needs. Centrus offers private duty nursing, along with assistance in activities of daily living. Greg explained that the process begins with a free home care assessment of needs, and that should Centrus be unable to provide the appropriate services, they will refer individuals to other organizations who can help. Centrus works with all insurers as well.

A conversation was spurred within our group around the issue of services that home health aides are unable to provide, such as administering medications to patients. Home health aides cannot provide medication to clients, but they can contact their managers or 24/7 nursing support by telephone. Unfortunately, this issue causes a predicament for some families of children whose medical needs are not complex enough to require full-time nursing care, but sometimes need more services that home health aides can offer, such as children who suffer seizures.

Greg’s presentation inspired an important conversation about the benefits and barriers of home health care. Family members and providers who are interested in continuing this conversation are encouraged to attend our January Medical Home meeting, during which we hope to further this conversation!

Medical Home Meeting: October 10, 2012

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October 10, 2012- During our most recent Medical Home meeting, two representatives from Baystate Health Rehabilitation Care– Clinical Supervisor Erin Jarosz and Physical Therapist Tien Pham- presented some of the pediatric services offered by Baystate Health Rehabilitation Care, among them being:

  • Speech Physical Therapy
  • Occupational Therapy
  • Coordination with Pediatric Developmental Services
  • Equipment Evaluations with vendors
  • Coordination with patients’ schools
  • Collaboration with Visiting Nurse and other home health agencies to develop plans of care
  • Coordination with local vendors to create adaptive designs for home assessments and to monitor progress and integrity of interventions
  • Training of home therapists from other agencies

Our group had a lively meeting with Jarosz and Pham, discussing issues such as the agency’s inability to provide home visits, as it is solely an outpatient-based organization. Nevertheless, Baystate Health Rehabilitation Care is clearly a valuable resource for families of children with special needs. Dr. Matthew Sadof of High Street Health Center Pediatrics, also present at the meeting, discussed his intention to develop a plan for collaborative work between his agency and Baystate Rehab. Ultimately, Dr. Sadof hopes to develop a guidebook of successful strategies for regional families and their healthcare providers.

To learn more about the services offered by Baystate Health Rehabilitation Care, visit the agency’s web page at http://www.baystatehealth.org/Baystate/rehab.