Receiving certification from Community Health Accreditation Partners (CHAP) is no small task, given the accrediting organization’s rigorous standards. Until now, no home health or hospice provider had earned the certification. Enhabit Home Health & Hospice and Compassus changed that this year. They both have earned the Age-Friendly Care at Home certification.

“We love to be innovative, we love to be forerunners in this space,” Enhabit Executive Vice President of Clinical Excellence and Strategy Bud Langham told McKnight’s Home Care Daily Pulse. “It was not a super-heavy lift for us because we have been incorporating age-friendly concepts for years in the form of patient-centered plans of care and striving to talk about advanced care planning.”

While Enhabit was the first home health provider to receive the certification, Compassus was the first hospice provider in the country to achieve the honor.

“Achieving Age-Friendly Care at Home certification reaffirms the work Compassus does every day to provide hospice care that focuses on a person’s all-encompassing needs,” Compassus Vice President of Clinical Quality and Standards Jen Hale said in a statement. “We are encouraged by the expansion of these standards to home-based care and honored to be distinguished as an Age-Friendly Care at Home provider at a time when more people are choosing to receive care in their home environments.”

CHAP developed the Age-Friendly Care at Home certification as an extension of the Age-Friendly Health Systems program, an initiative of The John A. Hartford Foundation and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement in partnership with the American Hospital Association and Catholic Health Association of the United States. The CHAP evaluation focuses on a set of four evidence-based elements established by the Age-Friendly Health System movement known as the 4Ms: What Matters, Medication, Mentation and Mobility. 

Patient collaboration was central to Enhabit’s adoption of 4M practices, Langham said.

“It really helped us focus our care efforts and communicate that planning care to physicians and the patients themselves,” he noted. “Our clinicians really now have an opportunity through this age-friendly lens to go deep on what matters to patients, what drives the best outcomes and the best experience. We are systematically rolling out these principles to all of our locations, home health and hospice.”

While Enhabit received its certification for home health agencies in Petersburg, VA, and Clermont, FL, Langham expects that number to continue to grow. The new standard not only will improve patient outcomes but also the employee experience as well. 

“[This certification] has been effective and I think it’s going to continue to be effective,” Langham said. “It’s been warmly received by our clinicians. It clicks for them, it makes sense for them and gives them a rallying cry and to take better care of patients. And a reminder why they got into this [vocation] in the first place.”

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