A study of patients receiving no billed nursing care

Although home health care traditionally is conceptualized as nursing care, in today's environment care at home may be delivered by a myriad of professional and nonprofessional practitioners. In fact, many patients who receive home care do not receive billed nursing visits. We studied a group of patients (n = 200) who received no billed nursing care, but rather received billed care from therapists, social workers and home health aides. This cohort of patients differed from patients who received billed nursing care in several ways: they were more frequently referred to home care from the community, their prognoses on admission to home care were significantly better, and their outcomes from home care services were considerably more favorable. Clearly patients not receiving billed nursing care have service and resource needs different from those of the population receiving billed nursing care. Therefore, new perspectives must be used when considering how to assess, deliver and perhaps pay for the requirements of these patients.