
As America's population ages and the first of the "baby boomers" turn 60 years old, a new coalition concerned about how we care for elderly and disabled citizens is reinvigorating efforts to improve the quality of care and quality of life for those living or recuperating in America's nursing homes.
Health care providers, caregivers, medical and quality improvement experts, government agencies, consumers and others are joining an ongoing Advancing Excellence in America's Nursing Homes campaign that builds on the success of other quality initiatives like Quality First, the Nursing Home Quality Initiative (NHQI) and the culture change movement.
The Advancing Excellence in America’s Nursing Homes campaign website includes a wealth of information for nursing homes, including detailed instructions for signing on to the campaign at www.nhqualitycampaign.org.
The voluntary campaign, which monitors key indicators of nursing home care quality, promotes excellence in caregiving for nursing home residents and acknowledges the critical role of nursing home staff in providing that care. Advancing Excellence in America's Nursing Homes will assess progress toward achieving the following measurable goals:
Nursing homes participating in the campaign will work on at least three of the eight goals mentioned above and can access technical assistance and guidance from quality experts in reaching their targeted goals.
Consumers participating in the campaign will help to create greater awareness of quality care and the resources available now, and encourage providers to improve the care they deliver. The campaign will report on providers' continuing quality improvement progress overall, and those reports will inform consumer choices for future long term care needs.
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MedQIC is a website where health care professionals can find and share quality improvement resources and browse through recommended interventions developed by colleagues and experts in their field. MedQIC offers tools, articles and links to resources about how to transform organizational culture, adopt health information technology, redesign care processes, and measure and report performance.
Steps to Quality Improvement Worksheets - This is a series of quality improvement worksheets for nursing home staff to use when undergoing a quality improvement project. The worksheets cover every aspect of a complete quality improvement process. You may find them most useful if you need to look at your current practice more critically.
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What is the Advancing Excellence in America’s Nursing Homes campaign?
The Advancing Excellence in America’s Nursing Homes campaign represents an unprecedented combined effort of multiple organizations, both public and private, as well as individuals who are committed to continuous quality improvement in caring for frail, elderly, and disabled Americans in nursing homes nationwide.
How did the Advancing Excellence in America’s Nursing Homes campaign get started?
Leaders from long-term care provider organizations and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) began discussing the idea of a campaign with measurable goals, and proposed it to the Administrator of CMS, Dr. Mark McClellan, in December of 2005. Dr. McClellan encouraged the group to further develop its proposal. With this support, a coalition of providers, caregivers, advocates, and government experts worked together to develop the Advancing Excellence in America’s Nursing Homes campaign based on key quality improvement goals.
What are the goals of the campaign, and how will the campaign track nursing homes’ progress in achieving the goals?
In the Advancing Excellence in America’s Nursing Homes campaign, providers will voluntarily commit to track their progress on at least three of eight measurable quality goals. Four of the goals focus on clinical outcomes for those receiving care in nursing homes, and the other four goals address process-related organizational culture objectives. A provider must select at least three goals with at least one goal that is a clinical outcome measure and at least one goal that is process-related.
The clinical goals include reducing the use of physical restraints; reducing pressure ulcers among high risk residents; and reducing pain for both short stay and longer-term residents. Data for these important clinical measures are collected via the Minimum Data Set (MDS), which is a tool used by nursing homes to assess residents’ health upon admission to and throughout their stay at a facility. Providers submit MDS data quarterly to CMS. CMS then publicly reports on these quality measures on the Nursing Home Compare tool on www.medicare.gov/nhcompare/home.asp.
The process-oriented goals encourage providers to set individual targets for continuously improving care quality in nursing homes and assessing resident and family satisfaction as well as staff retention and consistent assignment of staff. While the campaign will track these goals, too, the data for these four goals remain confidential and will not be publicly reported unless the provider elects to publish these process objectives. Those nursing homes that voluntarily elect to share their results for the process-related goals with the public will have this data listed on the Web site and can seek QIO assistance in developing trending reports. Providers not wishing to make their results public can monitor overall progress of the campaign, which will track the data in aggregate.
Regular campaign updates showing progress in the aggregate will be posted on the campaign Web site at www.nhqualitycampaign.org. In addition, the campaign will provide a listing of the homes participating in the campaign to allow consumers, providers and organizations (such as state and national associations) to track which homes have enrolled.
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Management
Michelle M. Pandolfi, MSW
(860) 632-3735
mpandolfi@ctqio.sdps.org
Administrative Assistant
Doreen Ostapchuk
(860) 613-3699
dostapchuk@ctqio.sdps.org
Clinical Advisor
Ann Spenard, MSN, RN
Project Overview | Tools & Resources | FAQs | Contact | Events
Project Overview |Tools & Resources | FAQs | Contact | Events