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.
But, in order to use your resources as wisely as possible, you need to know when, where, and how to allocate more nurses for optimal incident prevention. Unfortunately, you won’t find this information in your EHR or in a basic spreadsheet incident reporting system.
How do you obtain this information? A QA dashboard can reveal incident patterns and trends so you can adjust your staffing levels with precision.
Nursing Allocation Issues That Invite Incidents
Even if you have enough staff to meet the requirements throughout the day, there could be some potential trouble spots that require extra reinforcement.
Shift Changes and Times of Day
Although staff may do their best to make shift changes swift and seamless, this is a common time for increased incidents in many senior living communities. If this appears to be a trouble spot, you may want to increase staffing at shift change times and consider adding flex staffing to offer extra assistance.
In some cases, particular times of day can lead to increased incidents for one or more of your communities. This is often due to increased resident activity due to meal times or social events, but sometimes the cause isn’t obvious until you can view a clear pattern.
Considering Acuity Levels
If you have a number of high-risk residents, you may have an acuity level that needs more than the standard amount of nurses for adequate incident prevention. You can investigate your residents’ risk and acuity levels if you have QA software that tells you who is more likely to fall—and assign extra help for those residents accordingly.
Strategic Nursing Allocation = Better Quality
Your staff know how to handle the necessary steps that follow any incident. But wouldn’t it be even better if they were armed with the power to prevent it before it happens? If you’re able to keep the right allocation of nurses at the right time, you will have this ability.
A quality assurance dashboard created by specialized senior living software is an indispensable tool to help you achieve fewer incidents, higher quality, and a better quality of life for your residents. With good incident reporting data in a clear dashboard, you can determine whether different nursing allocation could help prevent incidents during peak times or with particular residents.
A tool like QA Reader can help you make the most of your valuable nursing time by targeting the times, trends, and residents that need extra care and attention—no guesswork required.
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