Falls happen every day in senior living communities. While we may not be able to avoid falls completely, there are some smart and proven ways to significantly reduce them.

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.

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.

There are top performers in every industry and every sport, and they have remarkable similarities. Sure, they have talent, but they also approach their work in the same ways and with the same tools.

I was just watching the U.S. Olympic Trials, which was dramatic and exciting. For most of the athletes, it was their best chance to go to the Olympic Games, to be an Olympian. No matter if they were a high jumper, a sprinter, a wrestler or a gymnast, after their event—when the microphone was placed in front of them, every one of them said the same thing: “I worked so hard to get here.”

Everyone has heard the stories of good doctors with bad bedside manner getting sued more often than bad doctors with good bedside manner. It's true with doctors, and it's true with facilities.

Are you nice? Would other people say you're nice, or is this just your own perception of yourself? Nice people are valued in our organizations because they're the glue that can hold a community together. Ever meet a person who wasn’t nice who was the “go to” person on a team or organization? Not often. 

It's a well-known fact that many resident falls aren't preventable. But it's still our responsibility to decrease the risk of significant injuries related to falls.

A large study from Canada showed that frail, elderly patients face a significantly increased risk of mortality in the year after undergoing major elective, non-cardiac surgery. Being frail before surgery substantially increases the risk of adverse postoperative outcomes and that frailty had the strongest impact on the risk of mortality after total joint arthroplasty.

According to a pair of studies published online in the Journal of Infectious Disease, statins—a class of drugs widely used to reduce cholesterol in older adults—may reduce the response to and effectiveness of influenza vaccinations.

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.

Adverse events are part of serving seniors, pure and simple.

Whether the resident is in your community for short term rehab or to spend their last days, they expect to receive great care. But the reality is, residents fall. They develop skin issues. And family members are processing these changes.

But enough of the dark and gloomy. We simply have to face reality and deal with it.

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.