Kelly Mackling is clinical nurse manager at the Visiting Nurse Association in Omaha. She testified before the Nebraska Legislature’s Health and Human Services Committee in support of LB22, State Senator George Dungan‘s bill to allow home visiting programs to bill Medicaid for their services.
Bringing home a new infant is exciting as well as challenging. As many of us know, every parenting experience is different. Every baby is different. The challenges new parents face include sleep deprivation, learning how to care for a new baby, breastfeeding, financial stressors, when to seek medical care and possible postpartum anxiety and depression. Imagine having the option for a nurse to come to your home and be able to spend time answering questions, checking on the physical status of mother and baby, helping with breastfeeding/feeding techniques and ensuring follow-up appointments are scheduled. The nurse provides all of these services, and refers to any resources to support the family. Well-baby visits at doctors’ offices are necessary, but providers are often stretched thin and don’t have time to cover all of these important topics.
The Visiting Nurse Association (VNA) in Omaha is excited to implement the Family Connects nurse home visiting program summer of 2025. Family Connects provides families one to two nurse visits in their home after discharging from the hospital. I currently manage a physician-ordered home nurse visitation program. Twenty-five years ago, I started working as a nurse home visitor in this program. The program is not evidence-based, but nurses follow orders from physicians for home visits to check infants’ physical status, feeding, draw blood if needed, as well as other more medically complex needs.
Limits on staff, clients they can serve
In 2024, our VNA physician-ordered program nurses saw over 700 newborns/infants. Physicians and other medical professionals often tell us they would refer so many more clients if our program was able to accommodate them. We do not bill Medicaid for our services. They are funded fully by grants and philanthropy. This requires us to place limits on the number of staff and clients we can accommodate in the program. The benefits of nurse home visiting we can see, and our clients report to us include:
- Calmer, more confident mothers and fathers
- Increased compliance with medical follow-up
- Fewer ER visits and overnight hospital stays
- Feeding of choice success
- Improved responsiveness to infant needs
- Safer home environments by simple changes made for infant safety
- Connection to community resources
Family Connects in Douglas County
Based upon the demand and successes of programs VNA currently provides, our agency felt compelled to partner with the state to implement Family Connects in Douglas County. We want to help more parents, and we know there are so many more families who could benefit from home visitation. LB22 would allow services to be offered statewide and ensure more mothers receive support from a nurse home visitor after they give birth, positively impacting both infant and maternal outcomes in the postpartum period.
Thank you, Senator George Dungan, for introducing this bill as well as Senator Brian Hardin and the Health and Human Services Committee for advancing it. Billing Medicaid for nurse home visits will allow us to extend services to more families in our community.
Read FFN’s testimony on LB22
Read FFN’s policy brief on LB22
Read blog post: Home visiting can be a lifeline for families
