If you’ve worked in home health care or hospice for any length of time, I’m quite sure you’ve heard of and read any one of Tina Marelli’s terrific books for providing quality care to your patients. The Handbook of Home Health Standards; Quality, Documentation and Reimbursement is known to many as THE book for any home health care professional’s library.
A new edition was released in 2018. If you’ve experienced a survey from the Dept. o
f Health you know that care planning must be unique to each patient. Many agencies utilize cookie-cutter check box systems which may or may not be incorporated into their EMR system. These check-box systems are a nemesis of DHS surveyors. A one-size-fits all system does not meet the unique needs of each patient and they will scrutinize your systems to death. Using Marrelli’s care planning strategies has helped many a home health agency survive a survey.
In her books, Tina Marrelli provides a multitude of standard care plans with tons of interventions and expected measurable goals that can be customized to fit any patient and supplement even the best of the check-box medical records. She also presents wonderful information for making the best OASIS decisions based on patient assessment data.
To meet the needs and expectations of millennial nurses as well as seasoned home health and hospice nurses, Marrelli has developed an app for customized care planning based on the plans presented in her books. The Red Book Hospice Care Planning app is available for IOS only currently and costs $3.99 for the basic app. (Android version will be available soon.)
There’s a great You Tube video demonstrating how to use and customize the app. Like any worthwhile app, it has optional subscription fees to enhance it’s performance and capabilities. If you choose not to subscribe, you can customize the plans on your own using her books as guidelines or develop your own plans. It’s a great tool to get you started, and the subscription fees are well worth the price for easily adding a large variety of customized care plans to your repertoire.
Marrelli who was the “Director of the first U.S. hospice program to attain Joint Commission accreditation for hospice services, helps caregivers meet quality, coverage, and reimbursement requirements in daily practice and documentation” has also authored the Hospice and Palliative Care Handbook, third edition: Quality, Compliance and Reimbursement. The book covers hospice and palliative care from A-Z and is a must have for any hospice or palliative care nurse’s library.
Also new from Marrelli and Associates is the Care Planning Made Easy app for IOS which offers a more diverse care planning system for nurses, students and other healthcare disciplines in any field. (Android version will be 
available soon.) The app is $3.99 and again has an optional monthly subscription fee for downloading plans from Marrelli’s books.
