When hospitals look at post-acute senior care communities (skilled nursing & assisted living) their criteria are very simple:
- You can send them patients (first time admits) or you can’t.
- You can help them reduce readmissions or you can’t.
- Their patients like your community or they don’t.
- Your care model is consistent with the hospitals or it’s not.
When hospitals look at post-acute senior care communities (skilled nursing & assisted living) their criteria are very simple:
- You can send them patients (first time admits) or you can’t.
- You can help them reduce readmissions or you can’t.
- Their patients like your community or they don’t.
- Your care model is consistent with the hospitals or it’s not.
If you can help in these areas you will be viewed as a strategic asset. If you can’t or won’t, you become an irrelevant entity.
How To Win
There are two departments in every senior community that can make a substantive difference in reducing readmissions. The nursing/healthcare component is the obvious. Dining services is less obvious, but has the ability to make a substantial difference. Trinity Senior Living with 32 senior housing communities in Indiana, Maryland, Michigan and Iowa made a strategic decision to aggressively create a program of care that would address the need for hospitals to reduce admissions. The dining service component was a critical part of the program because it is well documented that good nutrition and hydration improves resident wellness. Trinity teamed up with Unidine Senior Dining Services to create the ultimate wellness dining experience that looks like this:
- Meals, snacks and even purees needs to look, smell and taste great.. Without these elements, residents either won’t eat well and what they do eat, will not have the nutritional components needed to promote wellness.
- Staff are trained to identify risk factors and respond early to changes in status that indicate increased risk.
- Menus use high quality, fresh and seasonal ingredients that support the program’s nutritional goals. Fresh herbs are used to season the meals and enhance flavor while reducing use of salt and sugar and eliminating the need for preservatives and other artificial additives.
- The dining service is closely coupled with Trinity Senior Living, therapy services, activity and educational programs to create a comprehensive coordinated program.
- Hydration stations use clear, easy-to-operate dispensers with water that is infused with a variety of fresh fruits, vegetables or herbs. The flavors change daily to increase awareness and interest.
- The resident-centered program is privately branded as Trinity’s “Sanctuary” brand to ensure a consistent, recognizable and trusted presence across the system
Outcomes
How effect a program like this is, consists of answering two questions:
1. Is resident health improving and are hospital readmissions dropping?
2. How much does it cost?
Effectiveness:
Trinity is seeing significant measurable positive outcomes in areas that include: congestive heart failure, diabetes, hypertension, acute and chronic kidney disease, dyslipidemias, dehydration and un-prescribed weight loss with an end result of reducing readmissions.
Cost:
It turns out that doing it the new old fashioned way (the real old fashioned way was all fresh and local ingredients) with pre-cut, pre-packaged or prepared convenience foods can be more expensive than fresh, natural ingredients. All of this processing comes at a cost that is borne by the senior community while the residents pay in the form of lower quality and diminished nutritional value. Trinity and Unidine have managed to improve quality and clinical outcomes while controlling – and in some areas dramatically reducing – the cost of the program. You can download the complete case study: Integration of Dining & Nutrition for Coordination of Care and Reduction of in Readmission Rates.
By following the link you can also access an on demand webinar where the authors of the case study discuss their results. Steve Moran
This is a great project! i will use it in my facility, thanks
Another great article Steve!
In regard to the second and fourth bullets, it is imperative to provide staff a simple and efficient tool to communicate observations…. this way proactive measures can be taken immediately. The ability to share information with multiple care providers in real time both inside and outside the community is truly a comprehensive coordinated program.
Thanks again.
From LinkedIn Groups
Our local hospital instituted a community wide Post Acute Collaboration meeting quarterly in 2011. They invited all long term care and rehab facilities in their service area, which includes 25 in-county and 25 rural adjacent county facility representatives. This is part of the hospitals Quality Management initiative. For the last 12 months, we have been discussing the Medicare cuts and some of their strategies to “cope” and improve the community-based costs incurred in relationship to hospital readmission.
I found this article timely in regards to the current hospital culture. I am currently in management at a Supportive Living Facility and found the specific topics in this article “spot on.” It hadn’t occurred to me that highlighting some of these aspects of care could be used as a marketing/partnering strategy with the hospital. Thanks for sharing.
By Maureen Engelbrecht O’Brien
From LinkedIn Groups
Thanks Steve – Important conversations to be having. Keep up the great work!
By Aaron D. Murphy, Architect / CAPS
Hi Steve,
I am so glad to see that the quality of the food in the assisted-living facilities is finally being addressed. This is so long overdue. Kudos to you Steve for bringing this to the forefront also!
Thank you for all your great info.
Therese