As we close out another year, we reflect on a time marked by change, challenges, meaningful accomplishments, and growth. I want to extend a sincere Thank You to each of you who continued or began your journey with HHC this past year. Your dedication to our patients and commitment to high-quality care does not go unnoticed. As we move into 2026, our focus remains on continued growth, and we welcome ideas and feedback as we work toward enhancing your experience at HHC.
REMINDERS FOR THE NEW YEAR As we enter into a new year, I'd like to take this opportunity to go over a few reminders. These are topics that I have discussed here before and while I know this is a lengthy message, they are extremely important to your success as a clinician and to HHCs overall success. PLEASE be sure to READ the reminders and if you need further clarification on something, reach out to us and ASK.
Insurance Verification/Authorization - For chronic/long-term patients (infusions other than Antibiotics, Hydration, TPN, Cardiac Meds), Pharmacy will be frantically trying to seek insurance approval for patient infusions for the new year. They will place some of those patients on hold until that verification is obtained. They are not always the best at notifying us when a patient is on insurance hold. You should be calling your patients 24-48 hours prior to your scheduled visit to ensure the patient has received their medication/supply shipment. If you find that they have not received their medications, please advise the patient to reach out to their Pharmacy and let us know immediately. We can assist with reaching out to the Pharmacy to see if it is a pending insurance issue. Reaching out to your patient prior to the visit also serves to re-confirm the visit with the patient and generally ensure that nothing has changed since your last visit that would interfere with the infusion process. It is not acceptable to not re-confirm visits and run the risk of arriving at a patient’s home to find out they do not have medications, have been hospitalized, forgot about the visit and are not at home, etc. The purpose of the confirmation is to hopefully catch these issues before they occur and before you waste valuable time driving to the patient’s home. We will be watching these situations closely so that we can minimize the amount of your time and Agency resources wasted simply because the visit was not reconfirmed. Also, please remind your patients that they need to have a relationship with their Pharmacy. We help where we can, but patients are responsible for communicating with their Pharmacy if/when they have not received their medications.
Proper Tagging in Microsoft Teams - Please be sure that you are using the proper tagging protocols in Microsoft Teams. The @TeamHelp-Clinical(Business Hours Only) tag should ONLY be used during business hours (Monday - Friday, 8a - 5p). During afterhours which includes after 5p on week days and the weekends, you should submit a nurse ticket for any issues or questions. If for some reason you are unable to do that afterhours, you should tag @TeamHelp-CareCoordination(Best Tag) as there are many eyes monitoring that tag. No matter the day or time or the issue, the @TeamHelp-CareCoordination(Best Tag) is the best tag because a Coordinator can determine if clinical expertise is required and ensure that you are connected with someone from our clinical team. It is also acceptable to use both tags together. **You should NOT be creating direct chats to relay patient information/issues or ask patient/clinical related questions. If you find yourself, selecting and adding multiple different names to a chat, you are probably creating a direct chat and this is incorrect and may lead to your message being missed or you receiving a very delayed response. Please note that the “@TeamHelp-Labs” tag no longer exists. You will see office staff use the tag @InternalUseOnly-Labs. This new lab tag is used by internal office staff to communicate with our lab team and get them involved only when necessary. Again, you should NOT be using this tag. Reading these communications to ensure you are aware of the proper communication procedures is paramount. We have seen a significant improvement in the use of proper tagging since we implemented these tagging changes and to those of you who read these communications and adhere to the instructions…THANK YOU.
Always Read/Check your orders prior to medication administration - Our Coordinators try their best to alert you to changes or updates to orders, however they are not clinical and even if they were, it is always the administering RNs responsibility to read the orders thoroughly before administering medication to ensure there are no discrepancies. If you have any questions or need clarification, reach out to the Agency for clinical assistance. DO NOT wing it or guess! Also, PLEASE make sure you have everything you need to complete an infusion before you begin. You cannot spike and mix medications without having confirmed everything is there. These mistakes can cost the Agency a great deal of money and reflect poorly on our clinical judgment to the patient and the Pharmacy. We will be keeping a very close eye on these occurrences as we try to minimize these errors this year.
NEVER discard medications or take medications from a patient's home without proper approval - The medications that we infuse are very expensive and they do not belong to us. With that said, you should never discard medications (even pre-meds) without receiving the directive to do so from us/Pharmacy. If you are in a situation in which discarding medications seems to be the next step, please reach out to the Agency immediately so that we can follow all the necessary steps and ensure with have authorization to discard medications. Also, never take medications from a patient's home. Again, we do not own them so even if they are expired, damaged, etc., they should remain in the patient's home and be discarded there once we have approval to do so.
Check Anaphylaxis kits at each and every visit - Please be sure that at each visit you are checking to ensure the anaphylaxis kit is on hand and that the contents of the kit are within date. If the patient does not have an anaphylaxis kit or it is expired, please reach out to the Agency immediately so that we can notify Pharmacy. There are cases in which Pharmacy does not provide a kit if it is not on the orders and also situations where the Pharmacy/MD will allow us to proceed without it, often in cases involving well established patients. Again, please check to make sure one is there and that it is not expired.
PICCs/CVCs that aren't giving blood return - When seeing line patients who have labs ordered but the line is not giving blood return, please attempt to draw the labs peripherally as the MD needs lab results to direct the plan of care. Notify the Agency while you are with the patient if you aren't getting blood return and if you were unable to successfully obtain labwork. Anytime there is any issue with a patient, you should be notifying the Agency in real time (while you are still with the patient). This allows us to meet our contractual obligations to our vendors which include involving and notifying the appropriate parties when necessary. You can go to your "Pt Care & Scheduling" channel in Teams and send a message using the tag @TeamHelp-CareCoordination(BestTag) no matter the day or time or you can use @TeamHelp-Clinical(BusinessHoursOnly) if it is during business hours.
Lab Specimen Dropoff - When dropping off labs at the lab facility, please do not leave until you have verified that the facility has all the necessary information/paperwork to process the specimen including the lab requisition and please be sure you are labeling your specimens correctly, with attention to proper spelling and accuracy. Unfortunately, in lieu of you having the lab requisition printed and in hand, we are still required to use fax to send lab requisitions/orders to the lab facilities and technology does sometimes fail. If they do not have what they need, reach out to the Agency and request that we send it again. If you are drawing time sensitive labs (i.e. Troughs and Peaks), please be sure you understand when these labs need to be drawn in reference to dosing times. These labs cannot just be drawn at any time. If you will not be able to draw a time sensitive lab within the required time, please let us know so that we can determine the next best steps.
Ensure proper Visit Note Documentation is completed - When you are confirmed for a visit, please be sure you are reading the confirmation and following the instructions provided. Your confirmation message from the Care Coordination team often provides directions as to which paperwork is needed and any additional training that may be required for the visit. lt is extremely important that Start of Care (SOC) paperwork is completed for new patients as that documentation contains consent forms, other important information, and can effect reimbursement for the visit.
Timely responses to Referral Requests - Please remember that we live and die by your quick responses with your availability. When we reach out for coverage, we are on a time clock to get a yes from you, so that we can be the first agency to give that yes to the Pharmacy. The competition is fierce, and we have to stay competitive so that we all continue to work. Please know that it is never our intention to "bother" you, but a huge part of this job is providing some availability and openly communicating to us when you are available in a timely fashion. Please note that it is an expectation that you use Microsoft Teams to communicate with us as it is currently our main portal of communication. We do use regular text messaging as well in certain circumstances, but Care Coordinators are not expected to track you down by pigeon carrier, skywriting, etc. Please stay current with checking and reading your Teams messages so that you don’t miss important information like visit confirmations, mass informative communications like this one, and any other critical updates.
Incentive offerings - In certain cases we will offer additional incentive or "extra" to pick up visits. This has to be approved by upper management and is only approved in special circumstances. Please do not make it a habit of requesting extra for every visit. When we have the opportunity to offer it, we will.
We are so grateful for the effort, compassion, and dedication you have shown this year. Your contributions and unwavering dedication mean more than you know. Wishing you and your loved ones many blessings and a happy, healthy New Year!
Sincerely,
Shari Blackmon RN-C, BSN
Director of Nursing