Using Outcome-Based Critical Pathways to Improve Documentation

Abstract

Home health care providers are constantly challenged to provide cost- effective patient care while continuing to improve the quality of that care. Outcome-based critical pathways can help providers retain control of this process by providing documentation tools that record and track interventions and outcomes over the entire episode of care. These tools not only help to satisfy the documentation requirements of outside regulators and payors, they also help improve internal and external communications, provide a framework for outcome data collection, and generate data that can be used in continuous quality improvement (CQI) programs.