Everybody is busy. Everyone you talk to is busy and your acquaintances who aren’t busy probably aren’t exactly role models, so they don’t count. Do you feel like you're on a treadmill and then it’s Friday, then it’s Friday, then it’s Friday?

The funny thing about treadmills like the ones we're all on is they're actually an impediment. Let me qualify that—they're the impediment to making changes. 

What is your reaction when you hear someone say any of the following:

• “That's the way we have always done it.”
• “I didn’t want to propose a change because I thought you would (fill in the blank).”
• “What a piece of junk. I’m sure glad I didn’t write that.”

When team members lack imagination, it just means you don’t have a great team. But when you have a good team and team members don't feel safe, they won’t take chances. They also aren’t as valuable as they could be if they felt freed up to make a few mistakes.

QA reporting is standard procedure for staff of long term care facilities. But don’t think of it as simply a protocol you have to follow. If you have good QA data — not just numbers on a screen, but comprehensive, insightful data you can use — you’ll find it can be a real game-changer for not only your community's benefit, but especially for your residents’ wellbeing.

Are you doing everything you can to prevent falls at your facility? You’ve implemented physical changes such as handrails, non-skid floors, and lower bed heights. You’ve educated your nurses about fall prevention strategies. You properly document incidents in your EHR.

These are important fundamentals, but there’s more you can do to help protect your residents and your staff from falls. You can prevent more incidents if the right processes are in place. The following warning signs indicate your fall prevention strategy isn’t as robust as it should be.

Everyone knows that having the right staffing levels improves your star rating and the quality of the care you provide. Then why doesn’t everyone do it? The same reasons keep coming up:

• "We can’t find the right people."
• "We can’t keep the right people."
• "We have the right people, but they're doing tasks that don’t improve quality."

QA reports can be a valuable tool in your risk management efforts — if they’re giving you the information you truly need. Your EHR might be holding a lot of data, and perhaps you get a few QA reports too. But do you have clear, comprehensive reports that benefit your facility, staff, and residents?

The Elsberry Healthcare Center recently received the prestigious “Helping Hands” award from HealthCap.

“The award is only given to four facilities each year nationwide,” said Linda Haake, Administrator of the Elsberry Healthcare Center. “It was quite an honor for our little facility.”

It's time to pay more attention to incident reporting and analysis.

Quality incident reporting lies at the heart of many initiatives to improve patient safety. Risk management and patient safety programs rely on incident reporting to provide data on the nature of safety problems and to provide indications of their causes and potential solutions.

EHR systems are great tools for many different purposes in your facilities, but they aren’t a magic bullet for everything. Even the best tools have blindspots. Here are three gaps inherent in EHR systems that you will need to cover with additional tools.

There’s a lot at stake for assisted living facilities.

At HealthCap, our philosophy has always been that the best claim is the claim you never have to file. So risk prevention has been a real emphasis of ours. We visit nearly every member on their premises every year to help them deliver better quality to their residents, families, and employees. The visits involve a mix of consultation, data gathering, and analytics. As a by-product, we help reduce claims.