»COVID-19 vaccine priority populations vary by state, city
Following the Food and Drug Administration’s emergency use approval of the nation’s first COVID-19 vaccines, Kaiser Family Foundation analyses have emerged showing which states and cities are in need of the most vaccines to target initial priority populations.
States with the highest percentages of priority populations as a share of total adults included North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York and Ohio. The states with the largest number of people in those groups, however, are California, Texas, New York and Florida.
»States should complete COVID-19 vaccinations of all LTC residents, workers by March, AHCA says
The American Health Care Association said “tens of thousands” of lives will be saved if state and local health officials pledge to finish distribution among the population by March 1.
AHCA President and CEO Mark Parkinson added that the association will not issue a formal recommendation that providers require workers to receive the vaccines. Parkinson said the organization first wants to see the vaccine acceptance rate among employees and act off of that.
»AMDA’s new COVID-19 vaccine PowerPoint can help answer resident, staff concerns
A new toolkit created by industry clinicians aims to help long-term care operators directly address the questions staff members, residents and their families are asking about COVID-19 vaccines and getting vaccinated.
The kit includes a PowerPoint presentation that healthcare providers can share with employees and residents to stay a step ahead of concerns. It also contains a sample medical director’s letter about vaccines, which can be sent to families.
Additionally, the kit covers strategies to boost confidence in the vaccines and includes a link to a new episode of the organization’s COVID-19 video series: “AMDA COVID-19 Grand Rounds: Pearls from Your Colleagues.”
» PointClickCare adopts Carequality framework
Beginning in the fall of 2020, Carequality became available to all PointClickCare skilled nursing facility customers in the United States.
Carequality is a national, consensus-built, interoperability framework to enable exchange between and among health information networks. PointClickCare officials said the move will help improve care transitions and, ultimately, provide better care for patients.
» Prime Care Technologies adds new data archiving service
Prime Care Technologies said late last year it has joined the UKG Technology Partner Network — a fast-growing ecosystem of organizations utilizing the revolutionary Workforce Dimensions solution and intelligent UKG D5 platform.
As part of this network, Prime Care will deliver its securely hosted archiving solution, primeARCHIVE, to UKG customers migrating to Workforce Dimensions and other workforce management systems, enabling them to quickly back up and query historical workforce data.
“As a longtime UKG partner and integrator, Prime Care Technologies understands the criticality of workforce data storage needed to easily analyze, report, and comply with unique workforce rules,” said Jim Hoey, Prime Care’s president and CEO.
» GHD focuses on tracing, early notification of COVID-19 trends
Professional services firm GHD has unveiled four technology solutions aimed at increasing the safety of long-term care residents through contact tracing, appointment bookings and early notification of COVID-19 trends.
The solutions are: SimpleTrack, which allows facilities to track and report symptoms and virus exposure; Contact Connect wearables, which help promote social distancing and perform rapid contract tracing among residents and staff; Appointio, which allows facilities to bring their scheduling operations online; and Wastewater testing service, which allows experts to detect the presence of SARS-CoV-2 in the wastewater before symptoms are present.
From the January/February 2021 Issue of McKnight's Long-Term Care News
