Blogs, Guest Columns, Things I Think and Living Leadership
Are CMS risk-based surveys enough to address the downfall of survey delays?
By
Steven Littlehale
Apr 26, 2024
In April 2024, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced the testing of a risk-based survey (RBS) that streamlines the standard recertification process for high-performing nursing homes....
The Universal Foundation: What therapy teams should know
By
Renee Kinder
Apr 25, 2024
The recently published “Quality in Motion: Acting on the CMS National Quality Strategy April 2024” highlights further evolution of the 2022 Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) National Quality...
Playing politics with nursing home care
By
Brendan Williams
Apr 23, 2024
Tragicomically, CMS asserts “this final rule will not have a significant economic impact on a substantial number of small entities[.]”
Dumping syndrome
By
Jacqueline Vance, RNC, CDONA/LTC
Apr 23, 2024
As clinical people, most will associate “dumping syndrome” with the definition of a group of symptoms — such as diarrhea, nausea and feeling light-headed or tired after a meal — that are caused...
Therapy should be more than productivity
By
Jean Wendland Porter
Apr 22, 2024
“I’m too sick for therapy today.” “Come back later.” “Leave me alone.” If you’ve worked in long-term care (or hospitals or LTACHs or acute rehab hospitals), you’ve heard...
An MDS affair — or RFI — to remember
By
Joel VanEaton
Apr 19, 2024
I’m a sucker for classic movies. My parents made sure I grew up watching black and whites of the likes of Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney, Gene Autry, John Wayne,...
Knitting a team
By
Gary Tetz
Apr 18, 2024
I can still remember the clicking of needles and the feeling of chunky strands of cotton passing silently between my fingers. It was early in my elementary school epoch, and we tiny people sat cross-legged...
Robots running senior care? Not exactly — yet
By
Neville M. Bilimoria
Apr 17, 2024
With all the problems long-term care is grappling with and focusing on, sometimes it is harder to see even bigger problems down the road. Right now, senior care facilities are grappling with staffing shortages...
Conducting and documenting meaningful fire drills in LTC facilities
By
Stan Szpytek
Apr 16, 2024
From some of our earliest memories in elementary school as little kids, we all recall participating in fire drills on a periodic basis. Of course, the purpose of those fire drills was to train students,...
The Medicaid LTC snafu
By
Stephen A. Moses
Apr 15, 2024
Long-term care operators were sold a pig in a poke. When Medicaid started paying for nursing home care after 1965, it looked like a pretty good deal. The new revenue stream vastly expanded severely limited...