How to start home health

Most home health starts one of two ways: a hospital discharge planner sets it up before you leave, or you and your physician decide you need it at an ordinary appointment. Either route works, and in both of them you have a right most people do not know about.

Step by step

1. Call us. Describe the situation. We will tell you whether it sounds like home health, and what to ask your physician for.
2. Get the physician’s order. Home health cannot start without an order and a signed plan of care. We can communicate directly with the physician’s office to sort out the paperwork.
3. We verify coverage. Before care begins, so you are not surprised afterwards. How payment works.
4. The first visit — the assessment. A nurse comes to your home, reviews your history and medications, examines you, looks at how your home actually works, and builds the plan of care with you.
5. The plan of care is signed by your physician, setting out which services you receive and how often.
6. Care begins on the agreed schedule. What to expect.

Coming out of hospital

If you are being discharged, tell the discharge planner you want Communicare Elite, and call us in parallel — a same-day heads-up lets us start verification and scheduling before you are home. The first 48 hours after discharge are when readmissions happen, and a delayed first visit is one of the reasons.

What to have ready

• Your insurance or MO HealthNet card.
• A list of your current medications, including over-the-counter ones.
• Your physician’s name and phone number.
• Hospital discharge paperwork, if you have it.
• The name of anyone who helps you at home.

If home health turns out to be the wrong fit

Sometimes what someone needs is not skilled care but daily help that lasts far longer than any clinical episode. We will say so. For MO HealthNet participants that usually means Consumer Directed Services, which we also operate — so the conversation continues rather than restarting elsewhere.

Getting started with CDS →