The Visiting Nurse Associations (VNAs) of today are founded on the principle that people who are sick, disabled, and elderly benefit most from health care when it is offered in their own homes. Home care is an increasingly important part of our health care system today. The kinds of highly skilled – and often technically complex – services that the VNAs provide have enabled millions of our most frail and vulnerable patients to avoid hospitals and nursing homes and stay just where they want to be – in the comfort and security of their own homes.
Visiting Nurse Associations are non-profit home health agencies that provide cost-effective and compassionate home- and community-based health care. VNAs literally created the profession and practice of home health care more than one hundred years ago, at a time when there were no hospitals in many communities and patients were cared for at home by their family members, who did the best they could. VNAs brought professional skills into the home to care for the patient and support the family. They made a critical difference in the late 19th century, and are making a critical difference now as we embark upon the 21st century. VNAs were pioneers in the public health movement, and, in the late 1800s, VNA responsiveness meant running milk banks, combating infectious diseases, and providing care for the poor during massive influenza epidemics. Today, that same responsiveness means caring for the dependent elderly, the chronically disabled, and the terminally ill – some of our most vulnerable citizens. In doing so, they provide high-tech services previously provided in hospitals, such as ventilator care, blood transfusions, pain management, and home chemotherapy. Health care has gone full circle. Patients are spending less time in the hospital. More and more procedures are performed on an outpatient basis, and recovery and care for patients with chronic diseases and conditions has increasingly been taking place in the home. Moreover, the number of Americans who are chronically ill or disabled in some way continues to grow each year. Once again, VNAs are making a critical difference, providing comprehensive home health services and caring support to patients and their families across the country. VNAs are truly the heart of home care in this country today, and there currently are approximately 500 VNAs nationwide. Through these exceptional organizations, 90,000 clinicians dedicate their lives to bringing health care into the homes of an estimated three million Americans every year.
VNAs are a vital part of our health care system today, and, with the authorization of National Visiting Nurse Associations Week, it is my hope that visiting nurses will continue to provide necessary services to their patients and their families.