Our communities are healthier through quality care provided in a way and place people choose.
Mission
The VNAA will support, promote and advance nonprofit providers of home and community-based healthcare, hospice and health promotion services to ensure quality care for their communities.
Our Values
- Access to Care: We believe all persons should have access to affordable, high-quality, compassionate home and community-based healthcare, hospice and health promotion services, regardless of the complexity of care or ability to pay.
- Excellence: We strive for the highest possible levels of service, patient care, ethical conduct and integrity as we support the nonprofit mission in delivering healthcare.
- Transparency: We will share information and communicate openly among member organizations, stakeholder groups, VNAA staff and the Board of Directors in order to achieve our mission.
- Accountability: We will generate reliable and accurate data and information, and we are accountable to our members and the public for delivering measurable outcomes and results.
- Member Engagement: Our members guide our work to advance VNAA’s mission.
- Stewardship: We embrace our responsibility for securing and managing available resources efficiently and effectively in pursuit of our mission.
- Leadership: Embracing a sense of optimism, we believe that we can affect major changes in our communities to improve their health.
Strategic Pillars
The VNAA will develop its strategic activities around five key pillars that support achievement of its vision:
- Quality: The quality of home health and hospice care meets or exceeds evidence-based standards developed with input from safety net agencies. The VNAA will help its members pursue clinical and operational excellence to provide the highest possible quality of care and to achieve industry leadership as high-quality providers.
- Access: All Americans have equitable access to high-quality home health, hospice and community-based services. The VNAA will be a unique voice on behalf of all patients who need such services regardless of ability to pay or the complexity of their condition.
- Innovation and Transformation: Nonprofit providers routinely develop and adopt state of the art business practices, technology and innovative programs and partnerships in support of improved care to the community. The VNAA will be a primary resource to its members as they work to become and remain leaders and innovators in community health.
- Leadership: VNAA and its members’ management teams are a capable group of industry leaders acting together to implement strategies, solve problems, support innovation and create opportunities for others to lead. The VNAA will support efforts to develop tomorrow’s leaders and to position them for a prominent role in local, state, and national communities as experts in community health and aging services.
- Infrastructure: Nonprofit providers operate efficiently and effectively and create new opportunities to serve patients and communities. The VNAA will offer members goods and services that help them to deliver high-quality care at the lowest possible cost while improving patient experience.
Priority Initiatives
Launching the “VNAA Quality Initiative” to help members ensure accountability for performance and remain leaders in improving the experience of care, improving the health of populations, and reducing per capita costs ofhealthcare. Key activities of the Quality Initiative include:
- Working with appropriate external quality standards organization(s), develop the appropriate quality standards and measures that are evidence-based and risk-adjusted for high-cost patients with complex needs and major barriers to care.
- Establishing and supporting learning collaboratives in which VNAA members work jointly on specific quality improvement activities to address performance problems.
- Developing or acquiring a rich array of clinical and clinical management quality improvement education programs and tools to share among VNAA members, such as webinars/teleconferences, Web-based online clinical content, and interactive online courses offering continuing education credits.
- Participating in national quality activities to ensure that home health and hospice care standards are aligned across the continuum of healthcare and reflect the circumstances and needs of all patients.
- Expanding distribution and use of VNAA’s Nursing Procedure Manual as the “gold standard” of home-based clinical practice.
Promoting reforms in financing of high-quality home health and hospice services so they are available to all who need them. Priorities for reform include:
- Adequate resources from multiple and diverse sources to cover the exceptional cost of care for high-cost patients with complex needs and major barriers to care.
- Stronger efforts to combat waste, fraud, and abuse that divert resources and put access to care at risk for many patients.
- Improved financial and regulatory support for information and other technology supporting home-based healthcare, especially telemonitoring technology and meaningful use of electronic health record technology.
- Expanded authority of Nurse Practitioners, including signing plans of care and other activities within their scope of practice.
- Improved support for home health and hospice workforce development strategies, including appropriate education and training programs and site-neutral wage-related policies.
Supporting member efforts to strengthen their leadership position as diversified, innovative, financially strong, and cost-effective contributors to their communities’ healthcare delivery system. Key activities include:
- Creating a “best practice exchange” program in which members provide technical support to each other through a variety of in-person and remote interaction, connected and facilitated by the VNAA.
- Offering a wide range of discounted goods and services through the VNAA GPO to meaningfully lower the cost of operations.
- Serving as a “broker” resource to arrange for fee-based technical consulting services to establish new clinical programs and models, including home-based primary care and care transition programs.
- Offering leadership development programs for senior and mid-level clinical managers as part of the Annual Meeting, through Regional Meetings and teleconferences, supported by Web-based online content and tools.
- Developing educational programs that address the unique governance and accountability challenges of tax-exempt providers, including board development and management and community benefit documentation.
