UPDATE Weekly

Since January 1, 2018, NCHCFA has allowed 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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NCHCFA has 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 CEUs offered for these Webinars.

The next Webinar in the series is scheduled for March 15th, from 12 noon-1:00 PM. Mark your calendar today! Webinar details are below:

Title: Survey: The New CMS Requirements of Participation for SNFs and the “Resident Representative” Requirement; What is This, What Does it Really Require and How Does it Mesh with Federal and State Law Governing the Appointment of Resident Surrogates?

Presenter: Poyner Spruill, LLP

The new “resident representative” language in the COPs permits residents to designate an individual who may or may not be the same as their legally-authorized surrogate identified in a durable or health care power of attorney to make health care decisions, thus creating the potential for real confusion, real conflict and real problems for providers both in terms of resident care, survey liability and risk management liability. This Webinar will examine the “resident representative” requirement and how it meshes with state laws on resident surrogacy. While some questions about resident representative’s role remain unanswered by CMS, facilities can help manage this issue by asking residents to specifically identify the scope of authority they are granting to a “resident representative.” This session will help providers understand the “resident representative” requirement and how to work with residents to clearly delineate the scope of a resident representative’s authority.

Mark your calendar today. Click here to register today!

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The Situational Leadership workshop is an interactive and dynamic developmental session where we will introduce and discuss how best to apply the effective principles and approaches of The Situational Leadership Model popularized by renowned leadership and management experts Ken Blanchard and Paul Hersey.

Our high demand and ever-changing work environment requires that our leadership interactions with our staff be as effective and efficient as possible. Additionally, the diverse experiences, skills, and needs of our employees impacts more than ever how we manage, lead and inspire our work force. The Situational Leadership Model suggests that there is no “one size fits all” approach to leadership. Depending on the situation, varying levels or approaches of “leadership” and “management” are necessary. However, leaders must first identify their most important tasks or priorities. Second, leaders must consider the readiness level of their employees by assessing their ability and willingness. Depending on the level of these variables, leaders must apply the most appropriate leadership style to fit the given situation.

The four different styles of situational leadership we will explore are:

1. Delegating
2. Coaching
3. Directing
4. Supporting

After attending, we hope that you will feel confident and motivated and have the applicable tools and skills you can apply immediately to empower yourself and your leadership teams.

This workshop will be Tuesday, March 13th at the NCHCFA office in Raleigh, NC. It will be facilitated by Mark Gogal, a Human Resources Leader with over 25 years of progressive, global, and diverse human resources experience, practical business partnering expertise, strong organizational and analytical skills, and proven strategic management experience. He has a multi-faceted background in developing and implementing core HR policies/practices to meet the changing business, legal, and labor compliance environment. He has worked in a variety of industries in the public and private sectors including healthcare.

For the complete brochure and registration information, click here.

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The AHCA/NCAL 2018 Independent Owner Leadership Conference will be in New Orleans March 14-17, 2018. This is a unique and invaluable opportunity to earn CEUs, get fresh ideas, and discuss the challenges you and other Independent Owners (IOs) who own or operate 10 or fewer assisted living or skilled nursing centers deal with every day. You will have the opportunity to socialize and get to know other IOs from across the country.

Register by March 2nd and receive a $50 discount. Bring an IO peer attending for the first time and they will receive a $100 discount. The IO Conference immediately follows the AHCA/NCAL Quality Summit also in New Orleans.

Get all the details and register today.

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The AHCA/NCAL 3rd Annual Quality Summit will be held in New Orleans on March 12-14, 2018. There’s nothing better than spring time in New Orleans. You can enjoy great food and music while taking in the historic sites of the city. The Quality Summit offers education sessions that focuses on quality improvement, or other critical areas that impact organizational performance and resident care. The Quality Summit is ideal for skilled nursing, post-acute, and assisted living professionals!

Register now! You can earn up to 12 credits attending classes focused on:

• The New Survey – join us for a session devoted to the new survey process including information from providers who have already been through the new survey process
• Restorative Sleep – Empira Executive Director Sarah Brown, RN, LNHA will present their nationally recognized work on the importance of sleep
• Workforce Challenges – this year’s summit includes sessions on workforce development and staff engagement
• Antibiotic Stewardship and Infection Control – two experts from the CDC will provide information on these important topics
• AHCA/NCAL Quality Award – this session will provide an overview of how to apply for a Quality Award as an assisted living center.

Check out the education sessions, events and sponsors online. You can also download a copy of this year’s Quality Summit invitation.

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The American Health Care Association and National Center for Assisted Living (AHCA/NCAL) is pleased to announce the launch of a new Website to help long term and post-acute care providers administer CoreQ.

p align=”justify”>Developed by a team including Nicholas Castle, Ph.D., AHCA/NCAL, and providers with input from customer satisfaction vendors and residents, CoreQ is a set of five customer satisfaction measures for skilled nursing care centers (SNCCs) and assisted living communities (ALs) to use to assess satisfaction among patients, residents and their families. The measures capture short-stay and long-stay resident and family data for SNCCs, and resident and family data for ALs.

The Website includes available resources such as a CoreQ Technical Manual as well as a list of customer satisfaction vendors that have adopted CoreQ and can upload member CoreQ data to LTC Trend Tracker.

As part of AHCA/NCAL’s metric-based Quality Initiative to improve quality care, CoreQ allows providers across long term and post-acute care settings to measure overall customer satisfaction with a uniform set of questions. In 2016, the National Quality Forum (NQF) endorsed three of the five CoreQ measures for SNCCs through extensive testing and evaluation of the measures’ reliability and validity.

For more information about the CoreQ, visit the new Website here. Please e-mail coreQ@ahca.org if you have any questions or need assistance.

For any assistance with LTC Trend Tracker, e-mail help@ltctrendtracker.com.

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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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NCHCFA has partnered with nationally recognized speaker, Cara Silletto and her company Crescendo Strategies, to offer you a new online course. Are you having trouble retaining young workers? Do you find it hard to understand Millennials? If you missed our Full Day Workforce Summit, this 90-minute, self-paced online course shows leaders a Millennial speaker’s first-hand stories about the real generational issues on the T.A.B.L.E. (technology, authority, balance, loyalty, entitlement). Course participants will learn critical insights about all of today’s workers in order to bridge the widening generational gaps and reduce unnecessary employee turnover.

How companies use this online course:

• Consistent training across multiple locations
• Catch-up session for those who missed it live
• New supervisor and manager orientation
• Prep for strategic planning or leadership retreats
• Deep-dive diversity training beyond the basics
• Continuing education credits (1.5 NAB-approved credits)

NCHCFA is pleased to offer member discounts! Click here for more information and promotional codes. Click here to start the course (Remember to enter your promo code).

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A Newbie at 95 – “It’s never too late to get into The Games”.

NSGA Article

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A group of bunnies is called a fluffle.

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