The home care suction log is a simple document with extraordinary reach. At first glance, the suction log can seem like just a piece of paper with a client suction count, but it can be used for so much more.
When monitored, this valuable home care software record can help organizations decrease costs, streamline operations and increase revenue.
What Is the Suction Log?
A suction log is a compiled list of a client’s suction history.
A clinician can suction a client’s airway multiple times during a single shift, improving oxygen saturation and helping prevent infection. This task and the resulting secretions can be quickly and easily documented in an intuitive home care software.
Proper use of suctioning has proven to keep clients out of the hospital and allows for care in the home, decreasing hospitalization rates and improving client outcomes. A suction log is an easy way to stay informed of a client’s progress or decline.
Why Is the Suction Log Important?
At its most basic level, the suction log is used to prove the frequency of suctioning for documentation purposes. When studied in a log format, this tool can prove medical necessity and can be used during authorization requests.
What Should a Clinician Look For?
The log provides a clear view of changes in secretions, amount, consistency and color. It is a quick indication of when a client’s secretions start changing, possibly leading to a change in condition.
Trends can be mapped, with a clinician easily noting, for example, that suctioning used to happen twice every hour, and is now required four to five times per hour. The clinician can observe that the secretions were thin and clear, but are thick and yellowish two hours later.
New orders and treatments can be prescribed based on this documentation alone.
Meeting Compliance with Thorough Documentation
This simple log facilitates compliance by allowing for thorough documentation of adherence to the plan of care, with the results possibly indicating that a change in the plan is necessary. The suction log provides a quicker signal of the client’s status than if suctioning had not been monitored or documented as thoroughly.
Ease of Use in a Home Care Software
Because of its direct impact on client care, the Axxess Home Care suction log can be accessed from multiple locations within the software, providing optimal ease of use.
The log can be exported and faxed to Medicaid or other insurance providers for easy documentation of excessive or increased suctioning needs.
Counting suctioning needs manually is time-consuming. This home care software feature makes the process instantaneous.
When a suction log is used properly, home care organizations can decrease the risk of hospitalization and missed revenue, and provide documentation for substantiating medical necessity or even requests for increased home care hours.
The simple genius behind the suction log is another example of how a home care software designed by home care experts can position an organization for greater success.
Axxess Home Care is a home care software that provides HIPAA-compliant documentation and messaging for an improved user experience. See why other organizations trust Axxess Home Care and recommend it for organizations of all sizes.
