The 8-hour, 16-hour and 12-hour HCSSA training a home health administrator needs — plus a recertification surveyor and a complaint surveyor to rehearse with.
Before designation as an administrator or alternate administrator, you must complete 8 clock hours of initial training covering topics specified in §558.259(c), including HCSSA licensing standards, client rights and responsibilities, emergency preparedness, and complaint investigation procedures. Within your first 12 months in the role, you must complete an additional 16 clock hours of training per §558.259(d). After your first year, you must complete 12 clock hours of continuing education annually per §558.260.
A home health agency is licensed and surveyed under 26 TAC Chapter 558 like every other HCSSA. When it is Medicare-certified, the same visit also tests the Medicare Home Health Conditions of Participation at 42 CFR Part 484, which is why a recertification surveyor starts by asking for the unduplicated skilled admission count and the active patient census: those set the sample size, and she cannot start without them.
Her pressure points, in the order she works them: the QAPI plan and the minutes proving the committee met twice this year; the administrator’s own twelve hours of CE; aide supervisory assessments at fourteen-day intervals; and personnel files with license verification and the annual registry re-search.