Image of male nurse pushing senior woman in a wheelchair in nursing facility

Updated survey materials should be used by skilled nursing facilities to assess dementia care practices, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services encouraged in a recent announcement.

Survey topics include quality assurance, dementia care leadership and care policies via the newly revised Focused Dementia Care Survey Tools, released last Friday. The guidelines resulted from a 2014 pilot program and subsequent expansion targeting dementia care and antipsychotic medications. The public release was spurred by stakeholder feedback, with the intent that SNFs use them as a tool to self-assess their dementia care programs, CMS said.

“We learned a lot of great things from the pilot and we realized it was an excellent training experience,” said CMS coordinator Michelle Laughman in June, when the pilot expansion was announced. “We found that calling on family members, physicians and nurse practitioners is certainly an essential component, and the observations through the process are a critical piece.”

Click here to read the full survey materials.