A home health RN case manager is the nurse who owns a group of patients from admission to discharge. They do the start of care and recertification assessments and write the plan of care for the doctor to sign. They teach patients and families and direct the aides and LPNs on each case.
By the HireBus team · Updated · Pay data: BLS, May 2025
Median pay, home health care agencies · BLS, May 2025
We're hiring an RN Case Manager to manage a caseload of home health patients. You'll open cases with start of care visits and OASIS assessments, write plans of care for the physician to sign, teach patients and families, supervise aides, and keep everyone on the care team working from the same plan.
2. Essential Duties and Responsibilities
Complete start of care, resumption of care, recertification, and discharge visits, including OASIS assessments.
Review every medication the patient takes and report possible problems to the physician or allowed practitioner.
Write the plan of care, send it for signature, and take and document verbal orders.
Teach patients and families about their condition, medications, wound care, and when to call the agency.
Write care instructions for home health aides, and make supervisory visits as federal and state rules require.
Assess fall risk and home safety, and arrange therapy or equipment when needed.
Coordinate with therapists, LPNs, and the physician, and report changes in condition promptly.
3. Key Tasks / Daily Activities
Make [4–6] home visits in your area.
Document each visit at the point of care in [your EMR].
Call physicians' offices about orders, test results, and changes in condition.
Update the care team on patients who are declining, refusing care, or ready for discharge.
Check tomorrow's visits with the Scheduler and flag any patient who can't be seen.
4. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
OASIS completed on time: [your target].
Visit notes completed within policy: [your target].
Orders sent for signature on time: [your target].
Aide supervisory visits completed on time: [your target].
Hospitalizations among patients on caseload: [your target].
5. Required Qualifications and Skills
Active [State] registered nurse license, or a multistate license issued under the Nurse Licensure Compact if your state is a member.
[1+] years of RN experience, ideally in home health, med-surg, or another acute care setting.
Current BLS CPR certification, or able to earn it before your first visit.
Valid driver's license, auto insurance that meets our requirements, and reliable transportation.
Passes a criminal background check and any other screenings your state requires.
Protects patient privacy under HIPAA, including in homes, cars, and phone calls.
6. Preferred Experience
Home health experience with OASIS assessments and Medicare documentation.
OASIS training or COS-C certification.
Wound, ostomy, or IV therapy skills.
Experience with [your EMR] on a tablet or laptop.
7. Physical Requirements
Driving for much of the day and walking into homes with stairs, steps, uneven ground, and tight spaces.
Kneeling, bending, and helping patients move, including lifting or transferring up to [50] pounds with help or equipment.
With or without reasonable accommodation.
8. Work Environment and Schedule
Patients' homes across [your service area], with some time in the office for meetings.
Homes vary: pets, smoke, clutter, heat or cold, and limited space.
Exposure to blood and body fluids; follow standard precautions and use the PPE we provide.
Regular hours: [weekday visit schedule], plus a share of after-hours and weekend on-call: [your rotation and on-call pay].
Mileage between homes: [your mileage policy].
9. Compensation and Benefits
Pay: [range and hourly or salary basis].
Additional pay: [overtime, bonus or incentive terms, or none].
Benefits: [health, dental, vision, retirement, paid time off, and when they start].
10. Company Culture and Overview
[Two or three sentences on what your company does, the area you serve, and the support a new rn case manager gets in the first 90 days.]
11. How to Apply
[Apply link or email]. Our process: [phone interview, in-person interview, and next steps]. Contact [hiring contact] if you need an accommodation during the application process.
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What makes home health RN case management different
A hospital case manager plans the discharge. A home health RN case manager is the nurse who sees the patient, assesses them, writes the plan and runs the care team, mostly from a car.
The RN owns the assessments
When nursing is ordered, a registered nurse must finish the full assessment by the fifth calendar day after care starts. It includes OASIS, a check that a Medicare patient qualifies and is homebound, and a review of every drug for side effects, interactions, duplicates and doses not taken as prescribed. Updates are due in the last five days of every 60, within 48 hours of coming home after a hospital stay of a day or more (unless only for tests), and at discharge. An RN or therapist may do those. Source: 42 CFR 484.55: Comprehensive assessment of patients (Cornell LII).
Homebound has a definition
Medicare covers home health only for patients who are homebound. Leaving home has to be hard without help, such as a walker, a wheelchair, special transportation or another person, or not advised because of the illness. And the patient normally can't leave home, and leaving takes a lot of effort. The case manager's notes should show why, with details from the visit. Source: Medicare.gov: Home health services.
Orders have to be written down a set way
Only staff that state law and agency policy allow can take a verbal order. The nurse who takes one writes it in the record and signs, dates and times it, and the ordering practitioner signs it later. Every order goes into the plan of care, which is reviewed at least every 60 days. When the plan changes because the patient's health did, the patient, the caregiver and every practitioner on the orders are told. Source: 42 CFR 484.60: Care planning, coordination of services, and quality of care (Cornell LII).
The plan has to name the hospital risk
Each plan of care must spell out the patient's risk of an ER visit or a trip back to the hospital, and what the team will do about it. It also lists what the patient and caregiver need to learn before discharge. So the case manager's judgment goes on paper at admission. Who is likely to end up back in the hospital, and what are the visits for? Source: 42 CFR 484.60: Care planning, coordination of services, and quality of care (Cornell LII).
The aide works from the RN's instructions
A registered nurse or a therapist assigns a home health aide to each patient and writes the aide's care instructions. The aide reports changes in the patient to an RN or therapist. When an aide shares a case with nursing, the case manager often makes the supervisory checks federal rules require. If an on-site check confirms the aide's care falls short, the agency must retrain and retest the aide on those skills. Source: 42 CFR 484.80: Home health aide services (Cornell LII).
How much home health RN case managers make
The closest BLS group for home health RN case managers is registered nurses. Registered nurses who work for home health care agencies earned a median of $40.83 an hour ($84,930 a year) in May 2025, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s below the $97,550 median for registered nurses in all industries. About 198,180 of the 3,379,720 registered nurses in that survey work for home health care agencies.
Salaried, hourly or per visit, with on-call pay on top. If you pay per visit, show candidates the rate for each visit type, since start of care and recertification visits take the longest.
Home health care agencies
$84,930$84,930 median Middle half $78,250–$101,210 10th–90th $66,350–$126,090
All industries
$97,550$97,550 median Middle half $80,330–$112,350 10th–90th $68,940–$137,470
$50k$75k$100k$125k$150k
10th–90th percentileMiddle halfMedianAnnual pay, May 2025. Source: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics.
Annual pay by percentile
Group
10th
25th
Median
75th
90th
Home health care agencies
$66,350
$78,250
$84,930
$101,210
$126,090
All industries
$68,940
$80,330
$97,550
$112,350
$137,470
Skills to hire for, and what you can teach
Hire for these
Solid head-to-toe assessment, and the confidence to decide alone whether to call the doctor
Careful OASIS scoring, or the patience to learn it item by item
Charts during or right after each visit, not days later
Teaches patients and families in plain words and checks that they understood
Plans a week of visits across a territory and replans when a patient goes to the hospital
Firm and polite with doctors' offices about unsigned orders
Teach these on the job
OASIS item guidance and your agency's review steps
How to show homebound status and skilled need in a note
Your EMR on a tablet, including e-signatures for orders
Your aide care plan forms and supervisory visit schedule
Your on-call routine and who to call for help at night
Case managers chart at the bedside on a tablet or laptop in the agency's EMR, and spend much of the day on the phone with doctors' offices and pharmacies. Tell candidates up front who supplies the device and phone, and how mileage is paid.
Home health RN case manager interview questions
They have their own page: 6 questions that test this job, what strong and weak answers sound like, and a work exercise to run with your finalists.
Use your EMR reports and caseload sizes to set each target, then adjust it for nurses with heavy start of care weeks or long drives.
OASIS completed on time
Assessments finished inside their federal windows, out of every one that fell due, from the EMR's OASIS due-date report. Give each late one a cause: a missed visit, a sick nurse or a patient still in the hospital.
Visit notes completed within policy
Notes signed within your policy's deadline after each visit, divided by all visits that week. Coach at the first run of late notes, before they pile up and hold up review.
Orders sent for signature on time
Plans of care and verbal orders sent to the ordering practitioner within your policy's time, from the order tracking report. Watch both the count still unsigned and the age of the oldest one.
Aide supervisory visits completed on time
Of the aide supervisory visits due this month, how many were made on or before the due date, from the aide supervision report. A visit made one day past its due date is late, even if the month isn't over.
Hospitalizations among patients on caseload
Patients on this nurse's caseload admitted to a hospital, out of all the patients they managed, each quarter. Read each case with the director: was the decline caught, called in and acted on?
Career path
Hospital or nursing home RNBuilds assessment skills on a med-surg, rehab or skilled nursing unit.
RN case managerManages a caseload of home health patients from admission to discharge.
A doctor of medicine, osteopathy or podiatry can sign it. So can an allowed practitioner. Since the CARES Act, that means nurse practitioners, clinical nurse specialists and physician assistants, where state law doesn't forbid it. They can certify that a patient qualifies and order home health. The case manager sends the plan to whoever is in charge of it, then follows up until it comes back signed.
How much does a home health RN case manager make?
Registered nurses who work for home health care agencies earned a median of $40.83 an hour ($84,930 a year) in May 2025, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The middle half earned between $78,250 and $101,210 a year. Pay also depends on your local market, experience and overtime.
Can a new graduate RN be a home health case manager?
The template wants a year or more of RN work, ideally in home health or acute care. The reason is the solo work. A case manager assesses a patient at home, decides whether to call the doctor and teaches the family, with no charge nurse down the hall. A newer nurse can grow into it with several weeks of visits beside a preceptor and a lighter caseload at first.
Can LPNs take some of the RN case manager's visits?
Yes, many agencies pair them. The RN keeps the assessments, the plan of care and the calls to the doctor. The LPN makes routine skilled visits in between, such as wound care or checks against the ordered limits, within your state's LPN scope. It works when each LPN knows which RN to call and the RN reads the LPN's notes the same day.
Do home health RN case managers take call?
Usually, on a rotation shared by the nurses, answering patient calls by phone and going out when a patient needs a visit. Nurses compare call terms closely between agencies, so put them in the ad. Say how often each nurse is on call, what the on-call pay is, and whether visits made on call are paid on top.
