Are Robots the Solution to Senior Care Staffing Shortages?

The challenges we face as senior care executives are as multifaceted as they are pressing. Among the most formidable is the persistent staffing shortage that plagues our industry.

While the worst staffing shortages occurred during the pandemic, its reverberations continue to ripple through our operations. COVID-19 laid bare the vulnerabilities inherent in our current model of senior care staffing, exposing the precarious balance upon which our ability to deliver essential services rests. The sudden onset of the pandemic exacerbated an already tenuous situation, with many health care workers forced to grapple with increased workloads, heightened health risks, and unprecedented levels of stress and burnout. Even today, 94 percent of senior care facilities find recruitment difficult, with 67 percent reporting it’s due to a lack of interested or qualified candidates.

Read more at https://www.providermagazine.com/Articles/Pages/Are-Robots-the-Solution-to-Senior-Care-Staffing-Shortages.aspx

10 Elements of Safe, Functional Bathrooms

In a senior living facility, the bathroom is arguably the most important space to providers and their residents. Studies show that most incidents and falls occur in the bathroom. The independence, hygiene, dignity, and safety that occurs in the bathroom is all pivotal. That is why it’s so important to create an environment that supports aging over time and promotes independence for seniors.

https://www.providermagazine.com/Articles/Pages/10-Elements-of-Safe,-Functional-Bathrooms.aspx

Creating a Path to Emergency Preparedness

“Death Toll in Kentucky Floods Rises to 28 as Area Braces for More Rain.” This headline from late July is all too common. Crises—natural disasters, active shooter situations, the pandemic, power grid issues, and more—are increasingly becoming the norm. While long term care facilities must have disaster preparedness plans, it’s time to revisit these and make them flexible enough to address whatever situation comes your way.

Read more at https://www.providermagazine.com/Monthly-Issue/2022/SeptOct/Pages/Creating-a-Path-to-Emergency-Preparedness.aspx

Time for a Staff Empowerment Check

The pandemic hit staff hard. Personal protective equipment scarcity, staff shortages, required COVID-19 testing, working overtime, vaccine mandates—and the list goes on. Simply put, many staff feel disempowered. This feeling, if not addressed, can lead to further turnover.​

Staff empowerment, on the other hand, allows staff to make independent decisions and act on them. Empowered staff are valued and listened to. They stay with their current employers and encourage others to join the team. They have greater job satisfaction. They are happy and want to come to work.

Read more at https://www.providermagazine.com/Monthly-Issue/2021/November/Pages/Time-for-a-Staff-Empowerment-Check.aspx

Infection Control – Lessons Learned

​In Provider’s February issue, care providers share what COVID-19 policies have stood the test of time. In “Infection Control Lessons Learned,” clinicians say that new policies like patient isolation and enhanced disinfection procedures continue to work a year into the pandemic—and will continue to be important post-vaccination. “We probably will keep cohorting and isolation procedures for future outbreaks of infections, including the flu,” says Francine Rainer, chief clinical officer at PruittHealth.
What’s also emerged from the pandemic is a new portrait of the future of infection control.  Best practices and lessons are parts of it, along with new CMS policies that providers say should continue.
Take the Skilled Nursing Facility 3-Day Rule Waiver, for example. “We are focusing on this moving forward and advocating that it be a permanent change,” says Erin Prendergast, AHCA/NCAL senior manager, quality improvement.
Find out what best practices will continue and more about the new face of infection control and prevention here​.

The pandemic has changed the ground rules for defining, measuring, and reimbursing quality.

While the COVID pandemic has changed much in post-acute and long term care, efforts to provide quality care and track outcomes, trends, and opportunities for improvement have continued unabated. Facilities didn’t swap quality measures for COVID care, they just added it to what they were already doing.
Yet the pandemic has put a spotlight on how quality is defined, measured, and reimbursed, and it has exposed what works and where changes are needed.
“It is crystal clear that our nursing home residents are a vulnerable population that should not be exposed to the risk of pandemic, either because they are sent to hospitals or emergency rooms [ERs] unnecessarily or because new patients with potential infections are allowed to come into a building that is not yet exposed to the infection,” says Rajeev Kumar, MD, CMD, FACP, chief medical officer at Symbria in Chicago.
“Hopefully, surveyors and CMS [Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services] will work collaboratively with nursing facilities to minimize bad outcomes, rather than go on a witch hunt to find and use unfortunate outcomes to penalize nursing homes.”
Read more at

“Alarming Spike” in COVID-19 Cases Seen in SNFs.

A new report released today by the American Health Care Association/National Center for Assisted Living (AHCA/NCAL) shows skilled nursing facilities (SNFs) experiencing an “alarming spike” in COVID-19 cases due to community spread among the general population. The findings are based on recent data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).

http://www.providermagazine.com/news/Pages/2020/AUGUST/Community-Spread-Causes-Spike-in-new-COVID-19-Cases-in-Skilled-Nursing-Centers.aspx

Improving Acute Skills to Achieve Better Outcomes.

In this recent article from Provider magazine, Betty Halvorson, RN,  encourages providers to evaluate the current level of care their facilities are producing  and to ask themselves, “Is this care evidence-based?”

Learn more at:

 http://www.providermagazine.com/archives/2019_Archives/Pages/0819/Improving-Acute-Skills-to-Achieve-Better-Outomes.aspx#magazine-article

Staff Training and Competency: A Growing Challenge

Among the most difficult challenges facing skilled nursing centers today is ensuring that staff are adequately trained to care for their increasingly frail and medically complex residents. While training requirements are included in the initial phase of the final rule, and much more substantially in Phase 3, training and competency are more than a survey compliance issue.

Providing compassionate person-centered care for frail elders, many with severe cognitive and/or physical disabilities, requires staff to be well trained in understanding and addressing a range of resident needs and behaviors. Basic nursing and nurse assistant training provides a necessary starting point, and “caring” goes a long way, but even the most well-intended of us can benefit from training that builds upon knowledge and practice in eldercare.

Training requirements already included in the new regulations and survey relate to abuse and neglect for all staff, in-service training for nurse assistants on dementia management and abuse prevention, care of those with cognitive impairments, and training of feeding assistants. Training in these areas is essential to prepare staff to better understand the needs of those who are most vulnerable and/or difficult for caretakers to understand.

Phase 3 of the final rule will substantially increase the emphasis on training and competency with requirements relating to communication, resident rights, infection control, compliance, and ethics—especially in regard to person-centered care, behavioral health, and Quality Assurance and Performance Improvement. These specific areas are accompanied by the general training requirement that staff are trained to care for all resident needs identified in the facility assessment.

With competency requirements in these areas a year away (Nov. 28, 2019), nursing centers need to begin designing and implementing a systematic training program today. A combination of training methods is encouraged, including in-person instruction, web-based training, and/or supervised practical training.
Due to the steady evolution in resident care needs and treatment, training is required for both new and existing staff.

For nurse assistants, in-service training of at least 12 hours per year is expected to reflect an assessment of their knowledge and skills and how well they know the resident population. To determine the adequacy of in-service training, providers will be required to demonstrate competencies, not just completion of in-service hours.

Many nursing centers will require investment in training specific to the growing frailty and complexity of the long-stay resident population and the higher acuity of post-acute residents. High staff turnover and shortages of nursing staff with the necessary qualifications to take care of today’s elders will continue to be a challenge. Training programs must therefore be ongoing and sustainable so that they continue and evolve as resident needs change and staff capabilities change.

Balancing these training needs with caring for residents is a daunting task. That said, investments in staff training can make caretaking less challenging and more rewarding for staff members. These not only lead to greater staff satisfaction and retention, but the commitment to excellence will not go unnoticed by residents and families.

For a printable version of this article, go to:

http://www.providermagazine.com/archives/2018_Archives/Pages/1218/Staff-Training-and-Competency-A-Growing-Challenge.aspx