Visiting Nurses Association

In 1983, the Visiting Nurse Associations of America (VNAA) was established as the official national association of the Visiting Nurse Agencies (VNAs). The Visiting Nurse Agencies are nonprofit health agencies that provide nursing services in the home, using nurses and other personnel as home health aides trained to give bedside personal care. VNA services include skilled nursing, mental health care, hospice services, social work, and physical therapy. Hightech services such as ventilator care, blood transfusions, pain management, and chemotherapy can also be done at home by VNAs.

More than a century ago, there were limited hospital resources in some communities. The Visiting Nurse Agencies created home health care as a means of dealing with those patients that either had no access to hospital care or were deemed not seriously ill enough to require it. Families were caring for the ill at home. VNAs began making house calls to care for patients as well as to offer support to their families.

With the advent of managed care and the need to decrease the costs of medical care, patients are being discharged from hospitals earlier. As the length of hospital stays decrease there is again a need for visiting nurses as patients are cared for at home. VNAs care for almost 10 million people annually and account for a quarter of all not-for-profit, freestanding home health care services in the United States. A voluntary community board of local leaders, assuring that community health care concerns are addressed, governs each VNA.