Mature model Cindy Joseph said, “Aging is just another word for living,” yet aging in our culture gets a bad rap, and the healthcare industry is no exception. According to the US 2020 census, 1 in 6 adults living in the United States were over the age of 65, 16.8% of the American population. People are living longer, and as …
As we were growing up, our parents taught us to live by the “Golden Rule,” meaning, do unto others as you would want them to do unto you. Remember? Question, how reliable is that idea? Think about it, our outlooks and experiences may deviate from our residents’, right? Maybe we have a charmed life with no obstacles, enjoy good health, …
The Mayer-Rothschild Foundation Designation of Excellence in Person-Centered Long-Term Care Award, the first of its kind, seeks to develop a new national standard of excellence in the design, development, and implementation of residential care for older adults. In the first phase of this important project, The University of Maine Center on Aging and The Cedars are working together with an …
Care home settings, such as nursing homes or residential care homes, present unique challenges to patient safety. This systematic review published by the National Library of Medicine identified several gaps in the available safety measures used for quality monitoring and improvement in older adult care homes, including patient experience (i.e., quality of life or other resident-reported indicators of safety, psychological …
The Joint Commission announced the launch of a new Assisted Living Community (ALC) accreditation program. The program will help assisted living organizations deliver consistent and reliable care for residents. Applications will begin to be accepted on July 1. Today more than 30,000 ALCs in the United States serve more than 80,000 residents. ALCs have been increasingly shifting from a mostly …
The OIG performed an audit review focusing on the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS’s) use of data on nursing home staffing from April 2018 through March 2019; before the COVID-19 pandemic. They also noted recent CMS actions through December 2020. Since November 2016, CMS has required nursing homes to submit payroll-based staffing data, including data on nurses and …
Urinary incontinence is referred to as a “late loss ADL” however many of our female residents are wearing incontinent briefs and/or pads every day, and few receive evidence-based care for their incontinence. The consequences of untreated urinary incontinence are lower quality of life with higher morbidity and mortality. A recent systematic review commissioned by the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) …
In an article published on February 11, 2021, in Health Affairs, the authors stated that prior to the pandemic, persistent problems with nursing home care had been documented for years, often because of too few and inadequately trained frontline staff. The harm to frail older adults can be quite severe; abuse and sexual assault, infections, overuse of psychotropic medications, pressure …
Patients and families desire compassionate care from healthcare providers. In today’s healthcare environment, challenges exist for all providers, including nurses, with balancing the delivery of consistent, compassionate care and maintaining a professional quality of life (QOL) that incorporates overall wellness and a healthy work environment. Professional QOL incorporates positive and negative aspects. An important positive aspect is compassion satisfaction (CS) …
An ad hoc committee of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine will examine how our nation delivers finances, regulates and measures the quality of nursing home care with particular emphasis on challenges that have arisen in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. The committee will consider a broad range of issues such as: Ways to generate and assess the …
