Worth-based care continues to be an enormous driver in how senior dwelling operators are assembly future challenges.
That’s in keeping with a current survey by the American Seniors Housing Affiliation (ASHA) and tech agency August Well being. The survey contains responses from 68 senior dwelling scientific leaders between July 15 and August 15 of this 12 months. Almost a 3rd of respondents mentioned their respective organizations cared for between 1,001 and a pair of,500 residents.
About one-third of respondents, 31%, mentioned they don’t have any value-based care plans, whereas 29% are actively working with a value-based system in place.One other 31% are evaluating alternatives to affix a value-based care system.
“My sense is {that a} rising variety of corporations with a number of properties are dipping their toes in. For instance, they may be piloting value-based care at one or two properties. In case you are serving assisted dwelling residents, there are myriad causes to be eager about value-based care alternatives,” wrote ASHA President Dave Schless within the survey.
Coinciding with this shift to value-based care, operators are exploring new applied sciences to trace resident modifications in situation and acuity. However 87% reported nonetheless having conversations with a scientific group at shift change or division conferences to notice a change in situation. Sixty-two % of respondents mentioned they used digital well being document (EHR) techniques to set off re-assessments of resident acuity.
“Verbal dialogue isn’t dependable because it usually solely highlights the considerations for that time period,” mentioned Shadoworee Betts, Chief Working Officer at Senior Star, within the survey. “What in regards to the residents nobody is discussing? I’d like to see extra motion towards the usage of analytics to establish residents that want quick interventions.”
Staffing challenges result in modifications in emphasis
Senior dwelling suppliers and their scientific groups are altering staffing fashions to adapt to challenges in operations.
When requested about what’s modified concerning staffing fashions in recent times, 50% of respondents mentioned they’d expanded the function of treatment technicians, adopted by 28% including extra nursing employees to fight rising acuity and 16% including extra administrative employees.
“Positioning med techs as common employees and permitting them to tackle caregiving or scientific assist roles, whereas additionally including extra licensed nurses, permits operators to extra successfully reply to rising acuity inside communities,” mentioned Josh Allen, Principal at Allen Flores Consulting, who was quoted as a part of the survey.
Staffing remained a big problem for scientific leaders, with 65% reporting hiring or retaining employees as the most important problem, adopted by bettering high quality of employees (57%) and addressing rising resident acuity (41%).
Scientific leaders are additionally in want of extra particular knowledge to forecast the place staffing points will come subsequent, with high knowledge factors reviewed usually embody incident studies, causes for move-outs, high-risk resident studies and group acuity ranges.
The most important medication-related challenges confronted by senior dwelling groups embody med go staffing and operations (63%) adopted by polypharmacy, or the usage of a number of prescribed drugs to deal with one situation, at 53%. That’s adopted by errors made in treatment administration at 34%.
“Now we have discovered success once we take a proactive strategy to companion with pharmacists who specialize within the senior inhabitants. They can supply an intensive treatment overview on the time of move-in, which helps to mitigate the dangers related to polypharmacy and enhance resident care outcomes,” mentioned Jennifer Sato, who’s the vice chairman of well being companies for Oakmont Senior Residing, within the survey.
Senior dwelling falls have lengthy been an vital space for operators to concentrate on to enhance resident acuity, and operators are actually utilizing extra instruments to stop falls, with 26% having fall administration applications, 22% utilizing bodily remedy referrals, 21% conducting root trigger analyses of falls and 13% utilizing sensors or digital camera applied sciences.
