Fred Bonaccorso

Services and support for our frailest, oldest adults need to evolve and improve.  We need your leadership – now and into the future – to anticipate and embrace change, to help with the continued healing of our careforce, to imagine the skilled nursing and assisted living facilities of the future, to lead with compassion and humility, and to start NOW.

These urgent topics were top of mind during the recent 2022 Navigator Leadership Summit, an annual conference for long-term care decision-makers and operators to enhance their knowledge and network with vendors. The theme for this year’s conference was “One Community. One Purpose.”

Today, this has a meaning like never before. 

JoAnne Reifsnyder, a renowned expert in senior care, shared that it is no surprise that the pandemic has challenged every aspect of our industry and will continue to change the way we provide services and care for the residents of nursing momes across the country. To best prepare and adapt, we must shift the conversation from the “new” normal, to the NOW normal. 

“As leaders, we have to adapt to change by testing our assumptions and challenging ourselves and even be willing to make some mistakes, knowing that more change is inevitable,” she stated.

The now normal is all about workforce – or as Lori Porter, the co-founder and CEO of the National Association of Health Care Assistants, has reframed – the “careforce”. There has been a mass exodus from healthcare – not just long-term care, although LTC is recovering much more slowly than other sectors. Porter made a strong argument that language matters, and that as our largest group of care partners in skilled nursing, they are essential to the care and services these settings provide. They deserve better.

To plan the future, to define the NOW normal in senior care, Reifsnyder maintains we need to recognize the recent and lingering pain found in our facilities:

  • Staff feeling demoralized and overcome with grief
  • Broad-based workforce shortages across healthcare settings but especially in SNFs/LTC
  • Public perception and political pressure
  • Census recovery efforts
  • Surveyor scrutiny
  • Mounting financial pressures 

As these pain points mount, it leads to unhappy and disengaged employees, turnover, and ultimately, the labor shortage problem. As leaders, we have the responsibility to tackle these challenges by providing solutions and opportunities for the careforce. 

A primary cause of staffing challenges is the nature of the job. That is, employees are interested in working for companies they respect and respect them back and doing jobs that they enjoy or want to do. Noted Reifsnyder, “By creating a positive culture and providing the tools for employees to succeed, employees will be energized and feel empowered to provide the best service possible.”

Other causes for the labor challenges include work culture and on-site training. Like all staff, healthcare professionals want positive working relationships with peers and supervisors, stability and control over their work schedules, enhanced communication and transparency within their organizations, and emotional and practical support. 

Reifsnyder concluded, “While these solutions will not solve everything, they will address some of the challenges and there is no time to wait.” 

Your employees want to be a part of something bigger than themselves, and they want to be called to be their highest and best selves. As leaders, we need to let them. By encouraging, empowering and leading our employees, we can tackle the changes and challenges of healthcare together. 

Fred Bonaccorso is the executive vice president of Navigator Group Purchasing. Navigator is the largest and most experienced full-service GPO exclusively focused on senior care, offering a full range of programs, tools and services to help members achieve their resident and financial goals. The company is a subsidiary of Managed Health Care Associates. 

The opinions expressed in McKnight’s Long-Term Care News guest submissions are the author’s and are not necessarily those of McKnight’s Long-Term Care News or its editors.