ationing care may benefit the facility’s bottom line in the short term, but will not generate positive outcomes and good will in the community. As I advise and sometimes lecture, we need to do the right thing for our patients and our customers.
Before you invest in the most expensive cushions and mattresses available for those at risk, find a provider that can help you with pressure mapping and find out exactly what you’re getting and maximize your outcomes. Minimize your risk and theirs with the best options available.
Celebrate the demise of RCS-1. It is widely accepted that RCS-1 would have been the downfall of the SNF, would leave our seniors sicker, shorten their lives, and provide an unmanageable system for payment.
We all know about the rumored, accepted and commonly used practices that relate to rehab in the skilled nursing Facility, but do we really know if they’re valid and supported by a regulation? Yes, speech therapy can be the only skilled intervention for those patients who need it. No, progress is not a criterion for…
So many times, we get questions about how to “skill” a resident. Is she skilled if she’s getting IVs? Is he skilled because he’s getting wound care? What about the resident whose trach is capped? Is she skilled? When the rehab patient reaches the almighty “plateau”, and isn’t getting better, is he still skilled?
As healthcare workers, especially as healthcare workers in long-term care, we don’t have jobs that most people can identify with.
We need to better understand our dementia residents and learn how to enter their world to make them comfortable, maintain their dignity and improve the quality of their lives.
At the end of 2017, Congress recessed before a decision was made on the repeal of the Part B Therapy Cap that we’ve been living with, working around, and appealing since 1998.
Most of us have used or at least aware of the PHQ-9 (Patient Health Questionnaire) scale for depression. Through a series of questions that are directly related to the DSM-IV criteria, a patient or caregiver can determine whether they’re depressed and how best to address their depression.
