AMDA Foundation - A New Campaign to Improve Resident, Staff Quality of Life

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Vol XXI, Sep `06

A New Campaign to Improve Resident, Staff Quality of Life

Vol XXI, Sep `06

On September 29, 2006, a diverse group of long-term care stakeholders, including AMDA, will launch a two-year, coalition-based campaign to improve the quality of care in our nation’s nursing homes. The Advancing Excellence in America’s Nursing Homes campaign will:

Monitor key indicators of nursing home care quality;
Promote excellence in care giving for nursing home residents; and
Acknowledge the critical role nursing home staff have in providing care.

Through the above objectives, the campaign aims to promote individualized care and empower the nursing home workforce.

Additional information about the campaign is available at its official website; see below.

Summit

As mentioned above, the campaign will launch on September 29, 2006. The launch will be a one-day, invitation-only national Quality Summit in Washington, DC, where leading long-term care professionals, researchers, and consumer advocates will present about this important issue.

For those interested in the Summit, materials and information will be shared widely through the campaign website after September 29th.

Measurable Goals

At the center of the campaign is a commitment to measurable improvement. Campaign organizers will track improvement for each of eight goals (above right) selected and endorsed by coalition members like AMDA. To participate, nursing homes must commit to working on at least three of these eight goals and will track their progress online.

Campaign Goals

Reducing high risk pressure ulcers;
Reducing the use of daily physical restraints;
Improving pain management for longer term nursing home residents;
Improving pain management for short stay, post-acute nursing home residents;
Establishing individual targets for improving quality;
Assessing resident and family satisfaction with the quality of care;
Increasing staff retention; and
Improving consistent assignment of nursing home staff, so that residents regularly receive care from the same caregivers.

Complimentary Objectives

As you know, at the LTC-QI Partnership, our work centers on AMDA’s pain management and
pressure ulcer prevention clinical practice guidelines (CPGs).

Our project has multiple objectives, including to:

Test the effectiveness of the CPGs and their implementation toolkits; and
Help nursing homes improve their care processes and performance related to these
two important clinical outcomes.

Similarly, the nursing home campaign recognizes the importance of these two clinical topics;
included in the eight campaign goals are three goals related to pressure ulcers and pain (indicated in bold under Campaign Goals, above).

The campaign includes three related objectives to be achieved by September 2008:

50,000 fewer residents suffering from pressure ulcers (Goal 1); and
40,000 fewer long-stay (Goal 3) and 130,000 fewer short-stay (Goal 4) residents experiencing moderate-tosevere pain daily.

Supporting the Campaign

At the LTC-QI Partnership, we are pleased that the upcoming campaign recognizes the importance of pressure ulcer prevention and pain management. We encourage our partners to learn more about the campaign and to support both the LTC-QI Partnership and the campaign.