Nursing home managers need to contend with multiple operational challenges. Fully meeting residents’ needs while controlling budgetary expenses calls for careful oversight and an adaptive use of resources. Here are some common complications that managers must navigate in nursing homes.
Staff Recruitment and Retention
When evaluating the question of how can nursing facilities be improved, it is important to start with the quality of direct services to residents. High staff turnover is a widespread problem that can dramatically affect the quality of care.
In some facilities, understaffing is purposeful. Not having adequate support puts staff in a tenuous position of being unable to provide an adequate quality of care to residents. An already stressful job role becomes even more difficult and nursing home risk management becomes more onerous. Resultantly, people leave their positions in shorter time frames than other professions. It is also worth noting that nursing home staff are often among the most undercompensated in the medical sector. This disparity in pay also contributes to the problem of turnover.
Managers can improve turnover rates and prevent understaffing in nursing facilities with targeted measures to promote and sustain manageable working conditions. They should offer competitive pay as well as opportunities for professional development.
Emergency Preparedness
Part of nursing home risk management is creating an emergency plan to address things such as a severe weather event, health epidemic, or building system failure. The execution of an emergency response plan may involve numerous obstacles and unforeseen conditions. Also, responding to an exigent situation may require fast access to considerable operating funds.
When a facility creates an emergency preparedness plan, it has to account for the financial logistics of implementing it. Also, it is imperative that plans establish a clear chain of accountability. Everyone on staff must understand their individual roles and responsibilities.
Medical Services Utilization
Nursing homes do not have the same resources as hospitals in addressing acute medical needs. They do not have the same availability of specialists and other support personnel. Likewise, they do not have the same diagnostic tools, equipment, or medicine on hand. Resultantly, a physician at a nursing home is likely to give a resident who is experiencing a sudden onset problem a referral and that resident may spend several days as an in-patient.
Strategic relationships with external providers and testing centers in addition to enhanced access to physicians through telehealth visits can broaden the scope of attention and services that medical personnel can handle in-house. The spares patients from a hospital admission which could aggravate a patient’s condition due to the stress of displacement and increase their risk of exposure to hospital-acquired infections.
Building a strong infrastructure and devising smart operating policies will enable nursing homes to withstand formidable challenges. Proactive responses to problems benefit both facilities and their residents.
About Connected Risk Solutions
At Connected Risk Solutions, we use our expertise and experience to provide insurance information and programs to those who serve long-term care and senior living facilities. Since 2007, we’ve been offering insurance and risk management plans designed to help our agents give their clients the ability to achieve continued growth while simultaneously protecting against loss, containing costs and increasing profitability. With three offices to serve you in Chicago, Illinois; Phoenix, Arizona; and Burlington, Connecticut, we do everything we can to make your experience with us as professional and transparent as possible. To learn more, contact us at (877) 890-9301.
