“At senior care facilities, it’s easy to get caught up in the numbers – the percentages and ratings that earn awards and boost state and Medicare rankings. But we know that what’s most important is dealing with people as a whole. While the data points – how many residents need antipsychotic medications, are injured in falls, or report pain – are important clinical measures, they represent only a snapshot of an organization’s culture and all-around quality of care.

At United Hebrew of New Rochelle, we believe the best way to get good numbers is to start by looking at each resident as a whole person with distinct interests, joys, opinions, and frustrations, as well as medical needs, and managing their care plan accordingly.

Case in point: In 2013, we began a program called Dementia Connections, in which we trained staff who interact with the patients on our Nightingale dementia unit to better understand how cognitive impairment affects a person. We gave this training not only to the nurses, but also to the food service, environmental services and the engineering department– anyone who came into contact with the residents”.

Blogger comment:

Quality care goes beyond clinical measures … Rita has it right. Clinical measures are a regulator’s academic definition of quality of care. Rita’s is a definition for cultural measures that result in a quality of life. The flawed five star system counts mistakes in a subjective enforcement system and assigns a quality measure based on a negative criteria from a useless MDS system. No matter how CMS and Congress add more laws quality of life will continue to go un-rewarded or unrecognized. On the other hand in a positive reinforcement system incentives would go to those providers of holistic care because it is the right thing to do. Not fines for not doing it.