ALLIANCE VISITING NURSES
613 North Pike Road Suite B, Cabot, PA 16023 www.vnaalliance.org

---

Organizations Filed Purposes: Health care delivery & management: Provide community based programs, services, and facilities to seniors, disabled and ill persons in their homes and communities. Includes nursing, therapy, home health aide, medical social work, and related services.

VNA Alliance is an independent, voluntary, nonprofit home health agency licensed in Pennsylvania. All services are available without regard to race, religion, creed, color, age, ancestry, national origin, sex, sexual preference, lifestyle, socioeconomic status, veteran's status or handicap. The agency strives to operate in a Christian manner in all interactions with consumers, staff, and the community. The provision of care to consumers recognizes and supports consumers' rights and the inherent worth and dignity of each individual. The agency seeks to provide care to all consumers in need of its services while recognizing its goal to maintain financial viability. Service delivery is based on the belief that quality health care can be delivered using efficient, effective and ethical business practices. Approximately 2,986 persons were served with an average daily census of 420 patients, which is a 46% growth from the previous fiscal year. A total of approximately 48,408 visits (not including 54 non-billable visits) were completed by various disciplines. For fiscal year ending 06/30/2020, a total of $3,920 in services was rendered as benevolent care. VNA Alliance continues to provide a wealth of community services to the residents, organizations and various groups in Mercer, Crawford, Venango and parts of Erie, Lawrence and Butler Counties. Care is provided in a holistic, comprehensive manner that helps consumers achieve their desired quality of life and functional outcomes. Service to the community is achieved through responsive consumer care, caregiver support and education. Working as an interdisciplinary team, staff respect and support each other. Continuous quality improvement is integral to all agency functions with emphasis on employee development, risk management, strategic planning and organizational performance. A good deal of our success hinges on clinical outcomes which are conveniently captured by the STAR rating system. Five years ago, the CMS initiated this program to provide home health consumers "easy-to access and convenient" information regarding provider performance. A guide for patients and families to know if their chosen home health care agency is on track. To summarize this information in a user-friendly format, CMS launched the Home Health Compare Star Rating system. Agency STAR ratings are updated quarterly and can range from 1.0 to 5.0 STARs, with 1/2 STAR increments possible. Individual STAR measures are based on the following criteria: 1) Measures must capture a "common characteristic"- universal patient attributes identified within the majority of agencies. 2) Measures must have "improvement ability"- so that the efficacy of an agency's QAPI initiatives can be detected. 3) Measures must have "meaningfulness"-demonstrating practical application to a patient's lifestyle.4) Finally, measures must be "stable"- in that, for any given measure, large variations across time would be unusual. Currently, seven (7) measures are included in the STAR Report, ranging from walking to breathing improvement standards. During the past fiscal year, over 2600 patients have been admitted to our services, and 99.5% of the time, we accomplished this within 2 days! Also, objective progress was noted in practical items such as walking, medication use and bathing in well over 90% of all patients served-giving the VNA Alliance a 4.5 STAR rating! We are very proud of our tremendous team of clinicians, supervisors, managers and employees-collaboratively working toward our common objective of clinical excellence. Creating the ultimate patient experience remains a cornerstone to our mission. In the past fiscal year, 19.25% of our patients completed their HHCAHPS survey. Of that 19% sample, over 323 of our former patients gave the VNA Alliance an overall rating of 9 or 10. Our CMS patient satisfaction rating is 4 STAR-well above our regional peers. On January 31, 2020, acting HHS Secretary Alex Azar first declared a public health emergency following the World Health Organization's recognition of the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, as a pandemic. In response to this coronavirus outbreak, the state and federal governments have taken preventative or protective actions, such as imposing restrictions on travel and business operations and advising or requiring individuals to limit or forego their time outside of their homes. Even with decreased census when surrounding hospitals shut down, there were no layoffs as a result of the pandemic. Throughout the pandemic, education and guidance related to best practices and CDC protocol was provided by our corporate compliance team. The agency worked with a corporate purchasing team to ensure appropriate levels of personal protective equipment (PPE), laboratory equipment, tests and other related COVID response items were purchased to provide care is the safest way possible. The agency purchased $11,612 of PPE. From the early weeks of March 2020 and throughout the spring and summer months, the VNAA actively engaged in safe, evidenced based, informed practice to ensure the needs of our patients were met. When facing a frightening unknown, the knee jerk reaction may be to retreat and hide. The VNAA chose to run towards the pandemic and be a source of healing and hope. Many of our staff volunteered to treat COVID-19 positive cases. This group became our COVID-19 response team, consisting of RNs, LPNs and a physical therapist. We developed an internal tracking system to monitor our COVID-19 referrals and ensure only the response team could be assigned to COVID-19 positive cases. Extensive education pertaining to COVID-19 etiology, pathogenesis, symptomology and treatment was provided to the clinical team. Zoom chat rooms were initiated for staff to share their concerns and experiences. In the early weeks, daily COVID-19 meetings occurred to allow the transference of the most up to date COVID-19 information. Staff screenings and questionaries were initiated to track and monitor potential exposure. Our electronic medical record system was modified to incorporate patient screening questions encountered at each visit. Securing adequate personal protective equipment became a daunting task. A massive collaborative effort was initiated with our partners to formulate a tracking and supply network to ensure that our clinicians had all the supplies necessary to safely care for their patients. To date, over 150 COVID-19 packets have been created to allow our response team to provide COVID-19 care, for months, without any risk of running out of the appropriate PPE. The COVID-19 pandemic has been an opportunity for the VNA Alliance to put its mission into action. During this unprecedented time, the VNA Alliance team continued to find creative ways to engage with our community. Many of our employee's children created homemade "get well cards" that were sent to many of our home health patients. We increased the use of our physician portal, a means for improving the efficient and effective communication and coordination between the home health agency and the referring physician. We increased the use of our telehealth program, a free service that provides asynchronous monitoring of vital signs and other parameters for our homebound patients. Also, the VNA Alliance collaborated with our local hospital to ensure a seamless and timely transition was maintained for their high risk COVID positive hospital discharges. Our objective was to provide high quality follow up care within the home while also supporting our partner hospital's need to maintain capacity to manage the expanding health crisis. In November 2019, the employees of VNA Alliance set forth a challenge to donate a stack of Macaroni and Cheese as tall as their tallest employee. The donations given by employees more than doubled that goal and donated over 180 boxes to the Crawford County WiNS program. In December 2019, the VNA Alliance mission committee saw an opportunity to help the guests of the St James Haven, a men's shelter in the town of Meadville. They purchased a new zippered sweatshirt for each of the 7 guests and presented it to the men on Christmas Eve as a wrapped Christmas gift. The gift was given with the message that the men are loved by Jesus Christ and their community this season. While many events of 2020 were canceled due to the pandemic, VNA Alliance had the opportunity to sponsor two Golf Outings in the community during the tax year for Meadville Medical Center Foundation and Hospice of Crawford County. There were also numerous small items purchased and given as donations to the following local nursing homes in the area served by VNA Alliance: Garden Way Place, Grove City Medical Center Wound Center, Grove Manor Nursing Home, Orchard Manor Skilled Nursing Facility, The Lakes at Jefferson, Whispering Oaks. The cost to the agency for these sponsorships and donations are a total of $2,104 and benefit the local community that we serve.

---

---

Data for this page was sourced from XML published by IRS (public 990 form dataset) from: https://s3.amazonaws.com/irs-form-990/202121319349303017_public.xml