Providence Home Health Care, Inc.

10/27/2021

The ideal candidates for these positions would possess excellent communication and time management skills, and have the ability to work both independently and as a member of a team. Candidates must possess strong clinical knowledge in various geriatric disease processes.

RN Case Manager administers skilled nursing care to patients requiring intermittent professional nursing services. Teaches and supervises the family, and other members of the nursing team. Each staff nurse performs nursing services for residents within a specific area. These services are performed in accordance with the physician's orders and under the direction and supervision of the Director of Clinical Services. Assume the responsibility for coordination of care.

Monitoring through observations; patient, staff and physician feedback; written and verbal communication; quality improvement/quality assurance activities; records management. Responsible for Home Health Aide who may be working on a particular home care case. Responsible for communicating with all disciplines involved in the patient's care (i.e.: Physical Therapy, Occupational Therapy, and Speech Therapy).

04/28/2021

Open Position to Hire: Home Health Coder
QUALIFICATIONS
ICD-10 Home Health Certification (HCS-D or BCHH-C) – Placeholder; Coding Health Information Management 15; Coding Health Information Management 17; Administrative Health Information Management 2; Home Healthcare; Coding Health Information Management 16; Coding/OASIS review; Error Management; Administrative Health Information Management 3, Bilingual in Russian and English preferred.
WHAT YOU WILL DO
Assign ICD-10-CM codes to diagnoses from the care plans and documentation.
Act as a subject matter expert regarding Coding and OASIS questions posed by clients and key stakeholders.
Follow up with clients to obtain missing or incomplete information.
Perform OASIS review in accordance with guidelines.
Review and identify errors and report them to supervisors or department managers for follow-up.
Work with clinicians to clarify code assignments, which are unclear, or to complete documentation, which is inadequate or ambiguous.
WHAT IT WILL TAKE TO SUCCEED
Previous experience with Wellsky Kinnser EMR is a Plus
Prior experience in Home Healthcare and/or Coding/OASIS review.
Knowledge of billing and collection systems.
Data entry.
Understanding of types of health information and the rules and regulations surrounding their use.
Strategic thinking.
Critically evaluate and analyze information.
Effectively communicate verbally and in writing as appropriate for the needs of the audience.
Understanding of common medical terminology, anatomy and physiology.

04/21/2021

Hard work and dedication always will get recognized. Thanks to all our employees for their courage and professionalism.

03/10/2021

SARS-CoV-2 Antibodies May Protect From Infection, but for How Long?
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - SARS-CoV-2 antibodies were associated with protection from infection in a laboratory database study, but the duration of protection is unknown, researchers say.

"Being antibody-positive is associated with a lower risk of new infection than being antibody-negative," Dr. Douglas Lowy of the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda told Reuters Health by email. "People who have been infected once are less likely to be infected a second time. However, protection is not complete, so there will be some people who experience another infection."

"Going forward, it will be important to determine the duration of protection, especially if waning of protection is associated with becoming antibody-negative," he said. "A potentially confounding issue is whether the virus strains in the US will change over time, and if they do, whether the protection against new infection by strains that are closely related to the first infection will also extend to variants that are less closely related."

As reported in JAMA Internal Medicine, Dr. Lowy and colleagues created cohorts from a deidentified data set of commercial laboratory tests, medical and pharmacy claims, electronic health records, and hospital chargemaster data from December 1, 2018 through August 26, 2020. Patients were categorized as antibody-positive or antibody-negative according to their first SARS-CoV-2 antibody test in the database.

The primary end point was post-index diagnostic nucleic acid amplification test (NAAT) results; infection was defined as a positive diagnostic test post-index, measured in 30-day intervals (0-30, 31-60, 61-90, >90 days).

The cohort included more than three million patients (median age, 48; 56%, women). Of these, 88.3% had a negative index antibody result, and 11.6% were positive. Those with a negative result were somewhat older (mean age, 48 vs. 44).

Evidence of prior disease was 0.7% for the seronegative group, 18.4% for the seropositive group, and 6.7% for the sero-uncertain group, suggesting that seropositive individuals were more likely to have had symptoms of and/or a diagnosis of COVID-19 than those who were seronegative, although the majority of subjects in both groups had no evidence of prior infection in the observable data.

Of those with a positive result, 18.4% converted to seronegative during follow-up. Specifically, the ratio of positive NAAT results among those who had a positive versus a negative index antibody test was 2.85 at 0 to 30 days, 0.67 at 31 to 60 days, 0.29 at 61 to 90 days, and 0.10 at more than 90 days.

The authors conclude, "Patients with positive antibody test results were initially more likely to have positive NAAT results, consistent with prolonged RNA shedding, but became markedly less likely to have positive NAAT results over time, suggesting that seropositivity is associated with protection from infection. The duration of protection is unknown, and protection may wane over time."

Dr. Lowy noted, "Because some people may continue to shed viral RNA for a long time, we feel the most telling results are the rate of viral RNA positivity seen 90-120 days after the index antibody finding."

Regardless, he added, "Both antibody-positive and antibody-negative people should plan to be vaccinated when they are offered the opportunity to do so."

Dr. Ruth McDermott-Levy, Associate Professor of Nursing, Villanova University's Fitzpatrick College of Nursing in Pennsylvania, commented in an email to Reuters Health, "The data were only examined for an eight-month period. Further study of the longitudinal effects of antibody protection against the virus needs to occur."

"It is important to note, however, that there also were a small number of people who did test positive for COVID-19 despite having antibodies that indicated that they had prior exposure to the virus," she said.

"Overall, this study in an important addition to understanding of SAR-CoV-2 human infections," she added. "But, as the authors accurately point out, the safest way to have protection against COVID-19 is through vaccinations."

The study didn't examine B cells and doesn't address the potential reserves of antibody response they represent.

SOURCE: https://bit.ly/3b7uHPt and https://bit.ly/3kFDpYz JAMA Internal Medicine, online February 24, 2021

As a physician working in New York, New York, where coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) hit hard in March and April of 2020, people often ask me how to interpret their severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) antibody results. Many people have positive test results for the...

03/10/2021

Could Pollen Be Driving COVID-19 Infections?
Some scientists say they've noticed a pattern to the recurring waves of SARS-CoV-2 infections around the globe: as pollen levels increased in outdoor air in 31 countries, COVID-19 cases accelerated.

Yet other recent studies point in the opposite direction, suggesting that peaks in pollen seasons coincide with a fall-off in the spread of some respiratory viruses, like COVID-19 and influenza. There's even some evidence that pollen may compete with the virus that causes COVID-19 and may even help prevent infection.

So which is it? The answer may still be up in the air.

Doctors don't fully understand what makes some viruses — like the ones that cause the flu — circulate in seasonal patterns.

There are, of course, many theories. These revolve around things like temperature and humidity — viruses tend to prefer colder, drier air — something that's thought to help them spread more easily in the winter months. People are exposed to less sunlight during the winter, as they spend more time indoors, and the earth points away from the sun, providing some natural shielding. That may play a role both because ultraviolet light from the sun acts like a natural disinfectant, and may help keep circulating viral levels down.

In addition, exposure to sunlight helps the body make vitamin D, which may help keep our immune responses strong. Extreme temperatures — both cold and hot — also change our behavior, so that we spend more time cloistered indoors, where we can more easily cough and sneeze on each other and generally swap more germs.

Spike in Pollen, Jump in Infections
The new study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, adds a new variable to this mix — pollen. It relies on data from 248 airborne-pollen-monitoring sites in 31 countries. The study also took into account other effects, such as population density, temperature, humidity, and lockdown orders. The study authors found that when pollen in an area spiked, so did infections, after an average lag of about 4 days. The study authors say pollen seemed to account for, on average, 44% of the infection rate variability between countries.

The study authors say pollen could be a culprit in respiratory infections, not because the viruses hitch a ride on pollen grains and travel into our mouth, eyes, and nose, but because pollen seems to perturb our immune defenses, even if a person isn't allergic to it.

"When we inhale pollen, they end up on our nasal mucosa and here, they diminish the expression of genes that are important for the defense against airborne viruses," study author Stefanie Gilles, PhD, chair of environmental medicine at the Technical University of Munich in Germany, said in a press conference.

In a study published last year, Gilles found that mice exposed to pollen made less interferon and other protective chemical signals to the immune system. Those then infected with respiratory syncytial virus had more virus in their bodies compared with mice not exposed to pollen. She seemed to see the same effect in human volunteers.
The study authors think pollen may cause the body to drop its defenses against the airborne virus that causes COVID-19, too.

"If you're in a crowded room and other people are there that are asymptomatic, and you've just been breathing in pollen all day long, chances are that you're going to be more susceptible to the virus," says Lewis Ziska, PhD, a plant physiologist who studies pollen, climate change, and health at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health in New York City. "Having a mask is obviously really critical in that regard."

Masks do a great job of blocking pollen, so wearing one is even more important when pollen and viruses are floating around, he says. (Author Brenda Goodman)

March 09, 2021

Other researchers, however, say that, while the study raises some interesting questions, it can't prove that pollen is increasing COVID-19 infections.

10/10/2020

Providing Skilled nursing services at patient’s place of living

08/17/2020

There is an urgent need to repurpose drugs against the new SARS-coronavirus 2. Recent computational-experimental screenings have identified several existing drugs that could serve as effective inhibitors of the virus’ main protease, Mpro, which is involved in gene expression and replication. Amongst these, Ebselen (2-Phenyl-1,2-benzoselenazol-3-one) appears to be particularly promising. Here we examine at a molecular level the potential of Ebselen to decrease Mpro’s activity. We find that it exhibits a distinct affinity for the catalytic region. More importantly, our results reveal a higher-affinity, previously unknown binding site localized between the II and III domains of the protein. A detailed strain analysis indicates that, on such a site, Ebselen exerts a pronounced allosteric effect that regulates catalytic site access through surface loop interactions, thereby inducing a reconfiguration of water hotspots. Taken together, these findings highlight the promise of Ebselen as a repurposed drug against SARS-CoV-2.

06/10/2020

Llama antibody engineered to block coronavirus
Based on antibodies isolated from llamas, researchers engineered an antibody that prevented SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, from entering cells in laboratory experiments.
Follow-up work is being planned to test the antibody in animal models of the disease. (Sharon Reynolds/NIH)

05/07/2020

Study Finds Nearly Everyone Who Recovers From COVID-19 Makes Coronavirus Antibodies

Posted on May 7th, 2020 by Dr. Francis Collins

Credit: NIH

There’s been a lot of excitement about the potential of antibody-based blood tests, also known as serology tests, to help contain the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. There’s also an awareness that more research is needed to determine when—or even if—people infected with SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19, produce antibodies that may protect them from re-infection.

A recent study in Nature Medicine brings much-needed clarity, along with renewed enthusiasm, to efforts to develop and implement wide scale antibody testing for SARS-CoV-2 [1]. Antibodies are blood proteins produced by the immune system to fight foreign invaders like viruses, and may help to ward off future attacks by those same invaders.

In their study of blood drawn from 285 people hospitalized with severe COVID-19, researchers in China, led by Ai-Long Huang, Chongquin Medical University, found that all had developed SARS-CoV-2 specific antibodies within two to three weeks of their first symptoms.

04/02/2020

Characterizing MERS-CoV Disease
Since its emergence in 2012, NIAID scientists have advanced their understating of how MERS-CoV causes disease, focusing on developing animal models of disease and countermeasures to disease. Work has shown that for MERS-CoV to infect a person, the virus enters cells using the spike, or S protein. After entering the cell, the virus delays the normal immune system response, allowing the infection to gain a foothold in the body. By the time the immune system recovers, the infection has progressed and becomes much harder to fight. Scientists also have characterized different strains of MERS-CoV and can determine through tests how those stains affect different animals and how their form—liquid or aerosol—affects their stability. A rhesus macaque model of MERS-CoV has shown that clinical signs of disease appear within 24 hours of infection, and the virus causes disease deep within the lungs, leading to pneumonia. Researchers use the rhesus and other models to study how MERS-CoV causes disease and to evaluate potential vaccines and treatments. NIAID-funded researchers also have established several small-animal models of infection in mice that have been critical in the advancing the development of MERS-CoV medical countermeasures.

03/18/2020

NIH Clinical Trial of Investigational Vaccine for COVID-19 Begins
A Phase 1 clinical trial evaluating an investigational vaccine designed to protect against coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has begun at Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute (KPWHRI) in Seattle. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, is funding the trial. KPWHRI is part of NIAID’s Infectious Diseases Clinical Research Consortium. The open-label trial will enroll 45 healthy adult volunteers ages 18 to 55 years over approximately 6 weeks. The first participant received the investigational vaccine today.