About 20 years ago, during a consulting visit to a long term care community, the Director of Nursing was sitting at a computer (rare back then) entering incident data into a spreadsheet. When I asked what she was doing, she said, "My QA reports are due today and I haven’t input any of the incident data. I usually take the reports home and update the spreadsheet, but I ran out of time."

When I reviewed the spreadsheet it was pretty impressive. It allowed me to identify trends and produce graphs and charts. It was all that and a bag of chips!

But there are serious issues with spreadsheets. Let’s talk about the pitfalls of using spreadsheets for tracking and trending incidents and accidents in our communities.

Providing exceptional care in an SNF or ALF today involves much more than simply having good care providers and staff. If you’re striving to decrease the number of falls and other incidents, you may need to usesome strategic thinking and investigative work. In particular, you may be looking for valuable information about patterns in the number and type of incidents, and how these could be corrected with the right number of nurses at the right time.

If your senior living organization consists of multiple communities, you know it’s essential for each community to report its risk management data to the regional and corporate leadership. The incident data you receive are your “eyes and ears” when you can’t be at each community all the time.

The American population is changing—and that means important shifts for long term care, too. When we hit the mid-century mark, caregivers and communities will be working with a population that looks very different from what we see today.

The unfortunate truth in our industry is that active shooter policies, procedures, and training are not only necessary but required, depending on your community’s level of care and licensure. There is so much information from FEMA, OSHA, Homeland Security, and other sources that it can be overwhelming to review.

Well over a million older adults are living in nursing homes today, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). As Americans are living longer, the demand for long term care facilities is expected to grow. Experts predict a population of 3 million nursing home residents by the year 2030.

But it’s not the number of residents that poses a challenge to LTC facilities. It’s their unique health needs. The CDC says nursing home residents fall at twice the rate of seniors living in the community. Why does this happen? Because LTC residents tend to be more frail, have more health conditions, and take more medications than older adults in the general population.

Although you take measures to avoid falls and may even have a solid fall prevention program in place, they still happen. You already know that falls may have serious medical consequences for your residents. After a fall, a resident’s quality of life and ability to function can be severely affected. Even minor injuries can have emotional consequences for your residents, making them fearful and withdrawn.

But don’t simply accept falls as inevitable. Be proactive and look for ways to prevent them whenever possible. It’s well worth the effort. Here’s why.

If you have an EHR, you may think you have the data you need for complete QA reporting.  But when it comes to QA events, your EHR will likely leave you with questions — not answers — when an incident occurs.

Sure, you’ll have the incident recorded in the system, but your EHR simply isn’t designed to help you improve your quality outcomes. Here’s why your EHR can’t help you with QA reporting.

Skilled nursing and assisted living communities face unique challenges: they provide medical care while still needing to feel like home. This means that in addition to preventing incidents, you’re working hard to help your residents enjoy a high quality of life.

Providing a great resident experience doesn’t have to be complex. A few simple steps can help you put your best foot forward and be the community that others strive to emulate.

Skilled nursing providers were given the short shrift when legislators wrote and enacted health information technology (HIT) meaningful use legislation. Acute care hospitals and docs were given federal dollars for tech innovation, but LTPAC providers were given nothing helpful (money, guidance). SNF providers were given mandates related to improving quality, but not the means to measure and improve it. Legislators and regulators demand more and more from skilled nursing providers related to quality outcomes, but they ignore that the data needed to drive better outcomes has to come from somewhere.