Home care and the new economy. Creating a new model for service delivery

The strategy undertaken by the VNSNY for its survival has been to create a new service delivery model. The design of the SDM is based on a study of organizations, within and outside of health care, that face common challenges in the home health industry today: increased competition, declining reimbursement with escalating costs, and demands for improved outcomes and customer satisfaction. The model that emerged contained several important strategies in its design, including the alignment of team goals with organizational strategic objectives, restructuring teams as multidisciplinary units, redefining the work of teams to include practice improvement and supporting team learning, increasing members' accountability for team not individual performance. The SDM continues to evolve and improve during the process of implementation as lessons emerge from our experience with teams. Preliminary results indicate that the efforts have begun to show improvements in outcomes.