PICC Self-Management: Home Proves the Better Setting for Patient Education

March 2026

There has been an increasing trend of letting patients with peripherally inserted central catheters (PICCs) go home with the catheter in place.¹ Without the constant oversight of inpatient care, patient education becomes increasingly important. In fact, regarding PICC-selfcare teaching, a number of studies connect patient understanding and adherence with fewer complications and improved healthcare outcomes.² With patients traveling to and from facilities and home, facilities have differing patterns between settings for this education. Does setting matter? Dr. Huang and colleagues decided to find out. In July, Supportive Care in Cancer published their finding.²     

Researchers performed a systematic review and meta-analysis. The 19 included studies were all published between 2021 and 2024. They covered a total of 3,043 patients who went home with PICCs. Comparing patients who received routine self-care education, patients who received PICC-selfcare education at home had significantly better outcomes across all measured domains: self-efficacy, anxiety & depression, incidence of complications, adherence, patient satisfaction, and quality of life.

While Huang et al. focused on patients with cancer, there are a number of situations where catheter self-management can affect your patient’s sense of wellbeing as well as complication rates. For instance, long courses of IV antibiotics – OPAT (osteomyelitis, infective endocarditis, prosthetic joint infection, septic arthritis), parenteral nutrition, chronic intestinal failure, extended duration antivirals or antifungals, frequent blood draws, etc.  

Why would patients learn better at home? Huang et al. did not address this question directly. For your patients specifically, reasonable considerations include:

• Patients may be more comfortable at home.
• Family caregivers may be more accessible at home, especially when multiple nursing visits are available at no additional charge, as in Medicare-certified home health.
• Home health teaching may offer a more focused learning environment than facility-based teaching. Facility-based teaching is often delivered alongside higher-emotional-weight discussions such as diagnosis, diagnostic testing, and treatment decision-making.
• The Medicare home health benefit facilitates if not encourages an intensive education model:
• Nurse visits tend to be 30 minutes or longer.
• Nurses tend to make repeated visits to ensure self-efficacy and successful adherence.
• This gives nurses opportunity to teach as much as possible in initial visits and then divide topics into smaller follow-up lessons, a common home-health teaching method.

Considered in sum, the evidence points not only to the effectiveness of home health teaching for PICC self-care, but also to the broader value home health can bring to patient education in general. Medicare’s skilled need requirement is met when nursing teaching is required following a recent change in condition, treatment plan, or the development of a complication. For Medicare pay 100%, your patient must also meet the homebound requirement (meaning that leaving the home requires the assistance of another person or device, or that leaving the home is medically inadvisable except for infrequent and necessary outings).      

Please offer Ideal Home Care to Your Patients.

Remember to Bill for Home Health Certifications

Among the seven different billing codes doctors could use for reimbursement for work done with Ideal Home Care, certification and recertification of home health plans of care is probably the easiest to bill. The documentation requirements for these codes are nothing more than saving the paperwork you are reviewing.

G0180 = Initial Certification

of Medicare Home Health Care

*Payment comparable to a routine office visit

G0179 = Recertification

of Medicare Home Health Care

*Pays more than common paperwork codes

References

1. Marsh N, Larsen E, Tapp S, Sommerville M, Mihala G, Rickard CM. Management of hospital in the home (HITH) peripherally inserted central catheters: a retrospective cohort study. Home Health Care Management & Practice. 2020 Feb;32(1):34-9.
2. Huang X, Shi K, Zain NM, Yusuf A. Home care-based education for cancer patients with peripher-ally inserted central catheters: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Supportive Care in Cancer. 2025 Jul;33(7):1-23.