Case Management through Productivity Engineering: Part 1: Development of the Intensity of Home Care Acuity Scale

The business aspect of home health care has become more demanding of managers and clinical staff, requiring home care to meet the highest quality standards and be delivered in a timely, effective, efficient, and cost-effective manner. These requirements and the complex demands of both internal and external customers required the authors' home care agency to develop new management and clinical tools to meet these challenges. One of the tools developed was the Intensity of Home Care Acuity Scale (IHCAS), a tool used by managers and clinicians to assist in the appropriate case management of homebound patients. The IHCAS differs from other tools as it provides a guide to all clinical staff who provide home care services to this population and is not simply a nursing staffing tool. The development of this tool included analysis of actual data from the home health care department and input from the transdisciplinary team. The first part of this three-installment article presents the planning and development pro...