Local home health service helps patients heal, avoid hospital

Local home health service helps patients heal, avoid hospital Virginia S. Gilstrap Tue, 07/09/2024 - 13:52 Image

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  Jay Babcock (L) and Cory Smith (R) hold raffle baskets at the Cuero Home Health office, 613 Esplanade. Proceeds from the ongoing raffle will help homebound patients with extra necessities during the Christmas holidays. Tickets can be purchased for $5 at the office during business hours with ongoing drawings for winners. Each season new lighted door hangers are included as prizes. STAFF PHOTO

  Jay Babcock (L) and Cory Smith (R) hold raffle baskets at the Cuero Home Health office, 613 Esplanade. Proceeds from the ongoing raffle will help homebound patients with extra necessities during the Christmas holidays. Tickets can be purchased for $5 at the office during business hours with ongoing drawings for winners. Each season new lighted door hangers are included as prizes. STAFF PHOTO

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When the regional hospital shut down its home health services, a Cuero physical therapist and business owner bridged that healthcare gap when he purchased Cuero Home Health.

“I wanted people to be able to continue to have those services here locally and find a way to make that happen,” Jay Babcock said. The new office opened in April at 613 Esplanade, the same location as the previous provider.

Babcock is the owner of Gulf Coast Rehabilitation, a physical therapy practice for 30 years in five locations: Cuero, Goliad, Edna, Victoria and Port Lavaca. The outpatient division is Excel Sports Therapy.

Cuero Home Health is the only home-visit healthcare provider in DeWitt County. Babcock said nursing is the main service provided in the home.

“We are also providing physical therapy services in the home,” he said. “Whether they’re orthopedic or illnesses with generalized weakness or having falls in the home, we provide home safety - basically keeping people out of the hospital.”

William Klaevemann, of Yorktown, recently had knee surgery and recovered with visits from clinicians three times a week for the required physical therapy.

“They’re very prompt,” he said. “And they call before they come.”

Cuero Home Health Administrator Cory Smith, RN, said that certain steps have to go into place for a referral. Any licensed physician (MD or DO) or NPP (non physician provider, such as a nurse practitioner, physician assistant, or a clinical nurse specialist) or licensed dentist can order home health. The signing provider must certify that the patient is considered homebound or confined to the home to receive skilled services.

Some of the nursing services provided include wound care, lab draws and pic lines.

“Yes the doctors can say ‘I want you to have home health,’ “ Smith said. “But ultimately it is the patient’s choice who they let into their home.”

She said the biggest challenge for home healthcare providers is gaining the trust of patients. “You have somebody that has done something the same way for so long, and it’s not good for them medically,” Smith said. “We have to try to intervene in some way and gain the trust of the patient and the family.”

“We are tasked with a huge responsibility - taking care of another person - that’s huge for us,” she said. “And this is our calling, this is what we do, it’s why we came into medicine.”

In an age of medical specializations, the home health team can see the whole patient instead of the one system that was treated in the hospital.

“If you cannot treat the patient holistically, the patient’s never going to get better,” Smith said. “If you walk into a patient’s home and they’re on a strict, strict budget. Yeah, they may have medication but that’s all they can afford. If they don’t have food to heal from the inside, they’re never going to heal, and they’re going to keep going back into the hospital.

“So we want to be known as that agency that’s going to do what's right, we’re going to do what’s honorable and we’re going to provide quality care and do whatever we can for that patient.

Smith said Babcock has worked very hard to maintain a reputation for himself in the medical community.

“All the doctors that I’ve had the pleasure of working with since April know Jay very well,” Smith said. “They are going to recommend us because they know what type of clinician Jay is and they know what kind of care their patients are going to receive while on our services.”

She said hospital stays average $26,000 a day, but home health services average $11,000 — a year.

“You heal better at home,” Smith said. “You can’t sleep in the hospital, can’t rest.”

She said their clinicians are a resource for the doctor in that they act as the postcare eyes and ears of the physician.

Now that primary care doctors no longer follow patients to the hospital, Smith said, the hospitalists come in and often make major changes. Maybe their blood pressure was fine in the hospital so they reduced the medication. But then the home health clinician sees it creep back up over time.

The home health team can provide the bridge for the primary care doctor to understand what is happening and how urgent it is, and, hopefully, avoid going back into the hospital.

Smith said with every visit from a home health nurse “we are physically laying hands on the patient’s medication to make sure nothing has changed … and we’re doing medication reconciliations to make sure there are no harmful interactions with the drugs. If there is, we’re right to the doctor.”

Cuero Home Health aims for consistency with the same clinicians seeing the same patients every time. “They form a bond, and a clinician can know right away when they walk in if something is going on with the patient that’s not right.”

Babcock, who is also the director of outpatient and acute care at Cuero Regional Hospital, said “having people who really just care and are compassionate towards their patients makes all the difference in the world. That’s been a huge benefit for us. We just have amazing clinicians.”