Taking Healthcare by Storm: Industry Insights with Kyle Lavergne

In this episode of Taking Healthcare by Storm, Quality Insights Medical Director Dr. Jean Storm speaks with Kyle Lavergne, DNP, APRN, FNP-BC, Vice President of Clinical Programs for CenterWell Home Health.

Kyle discusses the American Heart Association's Home Health - Heart Failure Certification, which enhances evidence-based care quality and improves outcomes for heart failure patients. The certification emphasizes program management, staff education, patient support, care coordination, clinical management, and performance improvement, ultimately aiming to reduce hospital readmissions and promote better health outcomes.

Learn more about American Heart Association Certified Care™.

If you have any topics or guests you'd like to see on future episodes, reach out to us on our website.

Publication number QI-092625-GK

Transcript

 Welcome to "Taking Healthcare by Storm: Industry Insights," the podcast that delves into the captivating intersection of innovation, science, compassion, and care. 

In each episode, Quality Insights’ Medical Director Dr. Jean Storm will have the privilege of engaging with leading experts across diverse fields, including dieticians, pharmacists, and brave patients navigating their own healthcare journeys. 

Our mission is to bring you the best healthcare insights, drawing from the expertise of professionals across West Virginia, Pennsylvania and the nation.

Subscribe now, and together, we can take healthcare by storm.

Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Taking Healthcare by Storm, where we explore bold innovations and real world solutions in healthcare. Today we are focusing on the home, specifically the growing role of home health agencies in managing. Complex conditions like heart failure. Now, we have previously discussed the American Health Association Nursing Home certification for heart failure.

So today we're gonna be talking about that certification and how it applies to home health. Today we are joined by Kyle Lavergne, vice President of Clinical Programs at Center Well Home Health, and a leader in advancing high quality patient centered care. Kyle is here to talk about the American Heart Association Certified Care Heart Failure Certification for Home Health, this program is raising the bar for evidence-based care delivered in the home setting.

Now, more and more patients, people, human beings, want to stay home with their complex medical conditions like heart failure and this certification. Kyle's guidance makes that possible. So today we're gonna be exploring how this certification is transforming outcomes, empowering clinicians, and giving patients and families greater confidence in their care.

I am really excited to learn about this certification and how it is being utilized in home healthcare. So Kyle, thank you very much for joining us. Thanks so much for having me. I'm so excited to be with you uh, today just to really talk more about the American Heart Association, home Health, heart Failure Certification.

Yeah. I'm really excited and interested in it. Can you start by explaining what the Home Health Heart Failure certification from the A HA is and why it was developed? Absolutely. So you know, Dr. Storm, the American Heart Association, really has a very long legacy of recognizing hospital and hospital systems for their quality of care.

And with that, we really saw a need to extend that commitment beyond. Those hospital walls really into the more the post-acute setting where so many heart failure patients continue their recovery. And really, if you look back right around the COVID time in, 2021 is when we launched the home Health Heart Failure certification to bring national evidence-based standards into the home health space.

This certification really provides a needed and necessary framework to evaluate how home health agencies measure up against the American Heart Association's home heart failure clinical practice guidelines. It really helps to standardize care the processes, promote consistent education, and reinforce coordination across the care continuum.

With this, our goal is to ensure patients and not only patients, but their families can feel confident knowing their agency is recognized by the American Heart Association for delivering high quality guideline based heart failure care. With that. The heart check mark has symbolized excellence for decades, and now it represents the gold standard in not only heart failure, but heart failure in the home setting.

Yeah, having confidence in your provider is really essential. So  let's back up a little bit. So how common is heart failure among home health patients, and what specific challenges do home health clinicians face when they're managing these patients at home? Yeah, so heart failure is one of the most common diagnosis that we see in the home health setting.

Especially those who have been recently discharged from the hospital setting. These patients are often. Very medically fragile. They're managing chronic other conditions, not only heart failure, and these patients are typically very much at risk for readmissions. Really what makes managing heart failure at home especially complex, is the environment.

Clinicians are often relying on limited touch points of these patients. Varying levels of caregiver support and sometimes inconsistent access to simple things like scales, medications, transportation, social determinants of health issues. That's why we're having standardized protocols. Really trained staff and clear plans of care is just essential to this program.

Those things that you mentioned, like transportation, all social determinants of health issues. So that's a lot of the things that  I don't think many individuals think about, but they play such a huge role. So what are the key requirements or criteria that a home health agency must meet to achieve this certification?

This is where our certification really comes into play, and this is what the committee got together to really work on for quite some time before producing it. So really the, certification first of all validates that an agency has built their disease specific program around. Certain six core areas.

So I'll go over 'em with you. So the first one that's important is program management. So exactly what is program management when it comes to this. So it's a designated heart failure champion. One person who's gonna oversee the program along with a interprofessional committee that oversees the entire operation.

So these meet regularly to, to review the program. Next is. Personnel education annual and onboarding education specific to heart failure for the relevant staff. So that includes the nurses. That includes the therapist, that includes home health aide. So definitely education on heart failure to the staff.

Then  in home health what we really want to do is teach the patients and the caregivers how to self-manage their condition. So with that, the next part is really patient and caregiver education and support. So really individualize education to help empower patients and caregiver again, to help them learn to self-manage their condition.

In the comfort of their home. Then we have care coordination. This is always a little tricky in  the medical industry, but really working on clear coordination and collaboration across the care continuum from the time of referral all the way through discharge. Next we have clinical management, so this is really the implementation of the evidence-based protocols and guidelines.

In daily patient care. And then what's a program without performance improvement? Really ongoing quality improvement using standardized heart failure measures and outcome tracking. So really, these requirements help agencies build a structured, very sustainable program with clear measurable results. Yeah, the results are the most important.

So. How does certified heart Failure care in the home setting benefits patients and their families?  Really  the American Heart Association certification offers patients and their families really the reassurance that the care is aligned with the latest heart failure science, which we know.

Changes from time to time. So it's ensuring that we're following that. It means they're receiving care from a team that's been trained to identify early signs of decompensation reinforced education consistently, and followed a structured plan of care.  Another thing, it also encourages more proactive communication between the agency.

The patient and really the broader care team in efforts to do things like reduce avoidable hospital admissions, promoting better health outcomes. With this, we really feel you know, families feel more supported, patients feel more in control of their condition. Yeah, that is a huge part. So for our listeners out there who maybe have heart failure  what are some of the signs and symptoms of worsening heart failure that home health providers are trained to identify and then manage early?

Yeah, so going back to the that standard you know, when we talk about clinical education for our clinicians, one of the things that we have to make sure is that our clinicians are able to quickly recognize signs and symptoms of decompensation. So for those listeners things like shortness of breath, any rapid weight gain, and when I'm talking about rapid weight gain, I'm really talking, two to three pounds in a day, five pounds in a week. Obviously  swelling in the legs. Also, sometimes the abdomen as well. Sometimes just simple things like. Increase in fatigue. We get to the home and the patient was able to do chores yesterday and today they're just really tired. That could be a warning sign for us that this patient definitely could be decompensating, coughing or wheezing, especially more so than normal or appetite.

And  sometimes confusion as well. So you know when these signs appear. Clinicians are trained to follow an escalation protocol to ensure that the appropriate provider is notified, most importantly, very timely, and therefore, adjustments can be made and the patient gets the support and the care that they need before a hospitalization becomes necessary.

And I think people need to understand, they'd be like, what? Hospitalization? No big deal. It is a big deal because  we know from studies that the more that you are hospitalized, the lower your quality of life and the shorter your life. So we wanna make sure that these individuals are managed at home as much as possible.

So. You are intimately involved in a home health agency at Center Well Home Health as the Vice President of clinical programs, how does this certification impact home health agencies operationally, such as through improved outcomes, partnerships, or referral opportunities? Absolutely. That's a, That's a great question.

So I'll tell you you know, really, the certification has both clinical and. Business benefits from the operational standpoint.  Agencies often see reductions in things like hospital readmissions, improved staff confidence and stronger adherence to really the best practices out there. It also creates new opportunities for partnerships with hospitals and health systems and.

Ultimately payers, really increasingly, they look for certified partners that align with goals when it comes to things like value-based care arrangements.  Being certified by the American Heart Association helps agencies really stand out and signals their commitment to quality and to accountability.

Yeah, partnerships are really important. Leading to my next question, you touched a little bit about care coordination. So how, important is communication and care coordination, especially with primary care hospitals and ensuring that heart failure patients thrive at home?  Dr. Storm, you and I have been in this industry for quite some time, and sometimes communication is just where we lack.

So that's where this really, this. The program really helps out  so the certification really emphasizes coordinated transition. With that agencies must have processes in place to receive handoff reports from hospitals or referring providers and communicate plans of care across all disciplines while ensuring that patients have access to needed resources.

Upon discharge, our clinicians are trained to reinforce. Provider prescribe care, perform timely medication reconciliation, which is essential and escalate concerns appropriately and timely. You know that continuity is crucial for patient safety and success in the home setting. Yeah, huge. As I said  we wanna keep patients at home safely.

So last question. Where do you see the future of heart failure management in the home setting heading? And how will certifications like the one from the American Heart Association evolve to support that future? I think what we really have to look at is, first of all, quality improvement is really at the core of everything that we do with the American Heart Association.

As the heart failure science evolves, our certification standards must evolve along with it.  We regularly review and update the program and ensure its alignment with the latest guidelines and industry trends. Version two  of the certification standards has already been developed and launched in 2024, so we approved that last year and launched that.

 We're also exploring how to integrate more things like technology and broader chronic care strategies into our certification portfolio as well. The goal is to continue raising the bar for heart failure care no matter where that care is delivered, both in the inpatient. Or the outpatient and especially the home setting.

Yeah. I love the idea of these certifications. I think they're so very important in keeping people home, keeping people healthy, keeping people enjoying their lives. So Kyle, Lavergne, thank you very much for discussing that with us. If people want to learn more, I think it's probably a very long website, but can they find it from www.heart.org?

I believe. Yes. heart.org/certified care. Excellent. We will link that in the podcast again, Kyle Lavergne, thank you very much for joining us. Absolutely. Thanks for having me. Have a great day.

Thank you for tuning in to Taking Healthcare by Storm: Industry Insights with Quality Insights Medical Director Dr. Jean Storm. We hope that you enjoyed this episode. If you found value in what you heard, please consider subscribing to our podcast on your favorite platform.

If you have any topics or guests you'd like to see on future episodes, you can reach out to us on our website. We would love to hear from you.

So, until next time, stay curious, stay compassionate, and keep taking healthcare by storm.