This text-based course is a transcript of the webinar, “Diagnosis Dementia: Goal Planning and Documentation in Home Health Care” presented by Megan Malone, M.A., CCC-SLP and Jennifer Loehr, M.A., CCC-SLP.
>> Megan Malone: Although the topic on goal planning and documentation may not be the most thrilling, it is a necessary one. We feel it is important to share this information with you so we can continue to serve this population. As we know, documentation drives the system, like it or not. The more that we refine this and make our documentation functional and follow the rules; the more likely it is that we will be able to continue to serve this population effectively.
As we get into the objectives, I want to ask a couple of poll questions. How many of you are actually working in home health care right now? How many of you are currently interested in possibly working in home health care? You may not be yet, but are thinking it might be something you want to do. How many of you, if you are not working in home health care, are currently working with patients with dementia and are just interested in documentation in general? A lot of people out there are interested in working with this population or refining their documentation related to working with persons with dementia. The final question before we get started is how many of you are doing electronic documentation versus written? As we know, there is definitely a plan for all of us to be going electronic in the coming months.
Objectives
In this course, we are going to describe three important goals areas or categories for our dementia patients. We will describe the basic necessities for reimbursable documentation of speech therapy services with a dementia patient and list three main criteria for eligibility of home care reimbursement by Medicare. We are hoping to take you through the nuts and bolts of documentation for this population. What should we focus on in writing our goals? What should those goals look like? What are those necessities that we should have included in our documentation? What are the reviewers looking for? That is our main plan of attack for today.
