Analysis of a home health agency's productivity system.

Productivity is an important issue in home care. Employee perceptions of an equitable system are crucial and have been linked to job satisfaction, motivation, and production. Ten staff nurses, and all supervisors and program directors were interviewed to elicit perceptions of the productivity system. Staff nurses' time sheets for seven months were evaluated retrospectively for visit length, number of visits per day, payer source, mileage per day, and travel time per day. Mean time in minutes spent in the patient's home on intravenous visits (n = 58 visits) was approximately twice as long as that of home care visit (n = 11,573 visits). Mean length of hospice visits (n = 368 visits) was 25 to 29 minutes longer than that of mean home care visits. The proportion of Medicare reimbursement was negatively correlated with productivity bonus point achievement (when two high and two low bonus point outliers were removed). Recommended changes were based on both qualitative analysis of employee perceptions of the productivity system and quantitative analysis of time sheets.