UPDATE Weekly

Register today to attend the NCHCFA Annual Convention and Expo January 28 – 31, 2018, at the Sheraton Greensboro Hotel at Four Seasons/Joseph S. Koury Convention Center in Greensboro, NC! Call the Sheraton at (800) 242-6556 to make your room reservation. Identify that you are with “NC Health Care Facilities Association 2018 Convention” to receive the group discounted rate. Don’t miss the opportunity to earn up to 16.5 hours of educational credit for North Carolina Nursing Home Administrators, as well as up to 15.5 hours of Nursing CE credit! The advanced registration deadline is Friday, January 12th. Click here to register.

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Don’t miss the opportunity to bring a staff member to the 2018 Annual Convention & Expo for free! If a facility registers two staff for Package Two, a third staff member (Activity Director, Dietary or Maintenance staff, Nurse Aide, or Social Worker) may register for Package Two at no charge. The Expo 2018 seminar for Package Two registrants will include topics appropriate for any team member that works in long term care including Activity Directors, Dietary & Maintenance staff, Nurses, Nurse Aides, and Social Workers. About the Program:

Finding Your “Fred Factor” is based on the powerful book The Fred Factor, by motivational speaker Mark Sanborn. This book recounts the true story of Fred, the mail carrier who passionately loves his job and who genuinely cares about the people he serves. Where others might see delivering mail as monotonous drudgery, Fred sees an opportunity to make a difference in the lives of those he serves.

In this session, Mark Gogal presents an interactive developmental session that focuses on “turning the ordinary into the extraordinary” in work and daily life. He explores what “customers” really need and what it truly means to “serve others.” Mark discusses principles to become more successful by building strong relationships, to bring fresh energy and creativity to your job, and how to create real value for others. Register today and learn how to operate like a “Fred” and the positive and lasting impact it has on those you interact with every day!

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In November of 2015, CMS released Survey & Certification Memo 16-06 (SC-Letter-16-04-Focused-Survey-Tools), which included tools that were utilized for the Focused Dementia Care Survey process. These tools were released with the intent that facilities would use them to assess their own practices in providing resident care. Recently, the tools have been updated and current versions have been added to the National Partnership Web site via the following links (Resident Questions Worksheet 2018; Facility Questions Worksheet 2018).

The Focused Dementia Care Survey process is separate from the standard survey process, as are the revised tools. However, the new Dementia Care Critical Element Pathway (Form CMS-20133) was developed using principals from the Focused Dementia Care Survey process.

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Mark Parkinson, President and CEO of the American Health Care Association (AHCA), is featured in their annual report video. To view this message click here.

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Beginning January 1, 2018, NCHCFA will allow Assisted Living Facilities (ALFs) in North Carolina to join the National Center for Assisted Living (NCAL) through NCHCFA’s affiliation with AHCA/NCAL. Any ALF that elects to join NCAL will be a member facility of NCAL but will not be a member of NCHCFA.

If an ALF wishes to join NCAL, please e-mail Karen Lennon for membership dues information at KarenL@nchcfa.org or phone at (919) 782-3827.

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The North Carolina Health Care Facilities Association would like to thank our 2018 Gold Convention Hosts for supporting the upcoming Annual Convention & Expo. Be sure to visit them on Tuesday, January 30th during EXPO 2018 – NCHCFA National Best Bowl: Blue Ridge Pharmacy, Equinox Ventures Group, Healthcare Services Group, Medipack Pharmacy, NH Med Services, Poyner Spruill LLP, PruittHealth, Remedi SeniorCare, Southern Pharmacy Services and TridentCareRX.

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The North Carolina Health Care Facilities Association would like to thank our 2018 Silver Convention Supporters for hosting the upcoming Annual Convention & Expo. Be sure to visit Neil Medical Group and Smith Moore Leatherwood LLP on Tuesday, January 30th during EXPO 2018 – NCHCFA National Best Bowl.

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NCHCFA is adding a new benefit of membership in 2018—a monthly Lunch and Learn Webinar Series. NCHCFA will offer a one-hour Webinar on a timely and relevant topic to its members for no additional charge. There will be no CEU offered for these Webinars. Information on topics for the year will be available in the coming weeks.

The first Webinar in the series is scheduled for January 11th, 2018 from 12noon-1pm. Please see below for the January 11th Webinar information. Don’t miss out, put this on your calendar today!

Session info: Staying Power: How to Keep Employees Longer
Presenter: Cara Silletto, Crescendo Strategies

While some of today’s workforce is made up of deep-rooted, dependable staff, a larger number of positions are now a revolving door of turnover. During this webinar, employee retention expert Cara Silletto will teach participants ways to slow this revolving door and maximize the time you have with employees.

• Discover current employee turnover trends and future staffing projections
• Uncover the real reasons employees leave most organizations and ways to encourage them to stay
• Learn strategies for preparing your organization to manage shorter-term workers

Workforce thought leader Cara Silletto, MBA, is the President of Crescendo Strategies, a firm committed to reducing unnecessary employee turnover by bridging generational gaps and making leaders more effective in their roles. Cara currently sits in a unique sweet spot for her specialty of bridging the great generational divide, because she is an early Millennial herself, born in 1981, yet she is equipped with an MBA and more than 14 years of experience learning the unwritten expectations of older managers and business owners in order to advance her own career. Workforce Magazine named Cara a “Game Changer” and Recruiter.com named her in their “Top 10 Company Culture Experts to Watch.” Cara is also the co-author of “What’s Next in HR.”

Click here to log on January 11th at 12noon.

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The American Health Care Association (AHCA) has put together a summary of the recent changes to the RoP. Members can learn more about the finalized version of the State Operations Manual Appendix PP- Guidance for Long Term Care Facilities, which became effective on November 28th and contains interpretive guidance (IG) for Phase 1 and 2 RoP, by reviewing the full list of changes and downloading the summary of notable revisions AHCA put together.

Members are encouraged to submit technical corrections or concerns about the IG in the Appendix PP either to AHCA’s Sara Rudow or directly to CMS.

Members can access additional RoP resources, including a new Webinar series for owners and CEOs about these regulations on the RequirED section of ahcancalED and AHCA’s RoP Webpage.

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Alliant Quality wants to encourage SNFs to keep signing up for the National Collaborative – or SPACE. Alliant recommends having as much time as possible to get started on Quality Assurance Performance Improvement (QAPI) work and improving facility quality measures in a systems approach to improve their five star and composite scores.

Alliant Quality is the Medicare Quality Innovation Network (QIN) – Quality Improvement Organization (QIO) for North Carolina. Under contract with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), Alliant Quality invites your nursing home to participate in a collaborative designed to ensure that every nursing home resident receives the highest quality of care.

The Collaborative offers an exciting opportunity to learn from high performing nursing homes regarding their processes as they pertain to consistent/permanent staff assignment, teamwork and communications, leadership, regulatory compliance, clinical models, and quality of life indicators. The Collaborative aligns national nursing home quality initiatives and partnerships such as the Advancing Excellence in America’s Nursing Homes Campaign, The Partnership to Improve Dementia Care, and QAPI. Targeted focus areas will include increasing mobility, decreasing unnecessary use of antipsychotics in residents with dementia, decreasing potentially avoidable hospitalizations and decreasing healthcare acquired infections and conditions.

To register, click here for the Participation Agreement and fax or e-mail it back to Lisa Klemis, contact information is on the Participation Agreement. For more details, e-mail Leighann Sauls at Leighann.Sauls@area-F.hcqis.org or call (919) 745-4730.

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Alliant Quality, the Quality Innovation Network-Quality Improvement Organization (QIN-QIO) for North Carolina is seeking central North Carolina skilled nursing facilities interested in collaborating on the Special Innovation Project (SIP) Improving Access to Palliative Care in the Long Term Care Facility.

Palliative care focuses on comfort and improving quality of life. A team of professionals helps residents and families navigate through the health care system and make health care decisions that are right for them. Goals of this project not only include providing quality of life and satisfaction for residents of skilled nursing facilities (SNFs), but also provision of services that minimize risks of potentially avoidable transfers to acute care.

Often, nursing home residents lack advance directives that would assist them at the end of life. When a resident, without an advanced directive, suffers a worsening of their clinical condition, a cascade of care is put into motion and can trigger unwanted emergency room visits and admissions, which can lead to other complications. The provision of palliative care services for SNF residents supports person-directed care in a proactive way to honor the patient and their choices.

Alliant Quality, in partnership with SNFs and palliative care organizations, will develop customized education and learning sessions for SNF leaders to better understand palliative care and its beneficial role for the residents whom they are caring for each day. This educational offering will be pilot-tested in central North Carolina with SNFs who are interested in this Special Innovation Project offered through the Centers for Medicaid & Medicare Services.

Participating SNFs will have the opportunity to:

• Receive free training programs designed to improve their SNF staff competency and knowledge related to end-of-life care
• Join a learning network with experts on palliative care in the SNF setting
• Partner with palliative care providers in order to improve the quality of life of their residents
• Implement low-burden measurement strategies that monitor resident and family satisfaction with end-of-life care
• Improve rates of avoidable acute care transfers and hospital admission and readmission rates

For more information, contact:
Jennifer Judson RN, BSN
Project Lead, Palliative Care
Office: (678) 527-3473
Jennifer.Judson@alliantquality.org

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The issue of Legionella and water safety has increasingly been a hot topic for members, particularly since the release of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) guidance last year. In response to member requests for more guidance, AHCA has coordinated this Webinar from Dr. Nimalie Stone of the CDC to provide clarity on the issue and invite questions & answers. The Webinar will be recorded and available to access on ahcancalED after the event date.

Title: Water Safety and Reducing the Risk for Legionella in Nursing Homes
Event Date: January 31, 2018 – 1:30PM – 3:00PM (EDT)
Registration: https://educate.ahcancal.org/p/180131
Speaker: Nimalie D. Stone, MD, MSMD, MS
LTC Team Lead, Prevention and Response Branch
Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion
Centers for Disease Control & Prevention

Description: Legionnaires’ disease is caused by a type of bacterium called Legionella. Those at risk include persons who are at least 50 years old, smokers, or those with underlying medical conditions such as chronic lung disease or immunosuppression. Outbreaks have been linked to poorly maintained water systems in buildings with large or complex water systems including hospitals and long term care facilities. Transmission can occur via aerosols from devices such as showerheads, cooling towers, hot tubs, and decorative fountains. CMS expects Medicare certified healthcare facilities to have water management policies and procedures to reduce the risk of growth and spread of Legionella and other opportunistic pathogens in building water systems. This webinar will review the necessary steps to take and resources available to support your efforts in developing these prevention and management systems and processes.

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In November 2017, AHCA/NCAL recognized more than 1,575 skilled nursing care centers and assisted living communities nationwide through the organization’s Quality Initiative Recognition Program (QIRP), which honors member facilities for their individual work in achieving AHCA/NCAL Quality Initiative goals.

The 1,509 skilled nursing center achievers attained four or more of the eight outlined AHCA goals, and the 66 assisted living community achievers attained two or more of the four outlined NCAL goals. If we map where these achievers are located, we see they are quite evenly spread out across the nation. As you can see in the figure below, the vast majority of states have between 10 to 20 percent of its members as QIRP achievers. Georgia leads the way at 38 percent and Alabama is within the top five at 28 percent.

Program achievers will be recognized at the AHCA/NCAL Quality Summit in New Orleans, March 12-14, 2018.

As a reminder, all achievers must RSVP for the AHCA/NCAL Quality Initiative Recognition Program luncheon at the 2018 Quality Summit by January 31, 2018. Achievers can e-mail qualityinitiative@AHCA.org to reserve a spot.

In 2012, the Association launched the Quality Initiative as a national effort to build upon the existing work of the long term and post-acute care profession. The initiative aims to further improve quality of care in skilled nursing centers and assisted living communities by challenging members with specific, measurable targets.

AHCA members have since made progress on a number of goals, notably, by achieving significant reductions in the use of antipsychotics and in hospital readmissions. Today, more than half of AHCA members nationwide have safely reduced the off-label use of antipsychotics by at least 30 percent, and 22 percent of AHCA members have reduced hospital readmissions by 30 percent. Based on the distribution of QIRP recipients, AHCA members are improving the care and lives of the people they serve regardless of underlying health factors that may exist.

All skilled nursing center and assisted living community achievers can use resources available on both AHCA/NCAL Program Websites including the template press release here and logos here to promote their accomplishments.

A full list of achievers is available on the AHCA/NCAL Quality Initiative Recognition Program Web site here and here. For more information on latest results on the Quality Initiative, check out this progress snapshot.

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This DVD, Mobility and Safe Movement of the Elderly, Improving Your Skills to Prevent Injuries and Reduce Falls, by Teepa Snow, MS, OTR/L., FOTA, Dementia Care & Training Specialist, was developed in conjunction with Wake Allied Health Education Center, Durham Technical Community College and the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, Office of Information Systems. The content is formatted in separate segments in order to customize the delivery of content to your learning objective. Handouts developed by Teepa accompany each video and may be reproduced. To order, e-mail your request to Donna Snyder at donnas@nchcfa.org. The price is $35.00 (tax and shipping included).

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Achieving Organizational Change, On a Budget

Provider Magazine Article

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The FedEx logo has a hidden arrow inside it.

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