Grace Visiting Nurses

Jessica Whitaker LVN HCS-D - Intake / Oasis Coordinator

Jessica began working for Grace in 1999 with 7 years of home health experience and was hired as a field nurse for the Palestine office just months after it opened. She also assisted with running of the office and setting the groundwork for making it a successful branch office of GVN.

In 2000 when Medicare PPS came into effect Jessica was moved to the Jacksonville office, was given the duties of QA, this included reading all nurses notes and oasis assessment and ensuring it was entered into the computer correctly and submitted to the state in a timely manner, along with working with Medicare on Additional Documentation Request, and continued to give patient care on the weekends. She trained staff on Medicare and State Guidelines for Home Health Care. She trained full time QA person to assume quality assurance responsibilities and continued to assist them with QA as needed. As the years passed and ICD-9 coding came to play a more and more important role in Medicare PPS, she was trained in ICD-9 coding and in 2003 and became a certified Home Health Coder. At this time the office responsibilities were more than full time and she had to give up seeing Pt’s in the field.

In 2006 GVN changed to Misys software for clinical documentation, Jessica was part of the team to implementing the new software, she was trained on how to program the software for agency use, then trained to be the trainer, she then trained all the field staff on use of the new software, and continues to train all new employees on it.

Jessica continues to work in the Jacksonville office as primary intake person taking referrals, verifying insurances, coding all cases, reviewing oasis data, assisting with QA when needed, keeping up with the never ending Medicare changes and many other duties as the needs arise.