South Carolina Nursing Home Blog : South Carolina Nursing Home Lawyer & Attorney : Poliakoff & Associates Law Firm : Elderly Care, Senior Care

Below is an email i recieved from an ex-employee of Life Care Centers of America.  I have redacted certain personal information to protect her.

Comments: To Whom it May Concern,

I'm a former employee of Life Care Center of Sandpoint located in Sandpoint, Idaho. I ended my employment with Life Care. I found an interesting article on the internet by an Attorney in California on the operations of 13 different Nursing Homes. It had to do with abuse, neglect, fraud and other types of bad business conduct.

I was employee at Life Care for 6+ years and worked in the Marketing & Admissions process for approx 3-4 months. I did not do that job for very long because I felt I was lying to the families about the wonderful care resident's were to receive. I would walked down the halls and find residents not positioned in their wheel chairs properly, uncombed hair, dirty faces, needless to say unshowered for a week at a time! I soon went back to the floor as a C.N.A. to take care of the people.

And yes lots of times the facility were I worked was short staffed, many of the Resident's needs were not being met. Needless to say when it came time for employees to take their vacation they were denied because there was no coverage.   So many had to find their own coverage!  Which was one of the benefits for working for such a Company is Paid Vacation days. It is a bitter
subject for me being they have not paid me of my Vacation days acquired.

Anyways about Life Care and their Policy. They have an electronic system to record all of the Cares done for the Resident' by the CNA'S.  Which it seems to me a big cover up to blame their business practices on the CNA's there. Also they have another system called IDA which records all the incident of residents. It is such a clever thing to have this system . But what it does is steal the Care from the Resident's while you sit and do all your charting at a computer for a 1/2 hr to an Hour. The managers have so many meetings that they can't even get their own work done! And on and on it goes. May main concern is for the resident's in those places. They lose everything they worked for!
 

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Kansa City Infozine had an article about a new study from a University of Missouri researcher which found that long-term care facilities in Missouri saved more than $6 million in the past three years after implementing a quality care improvement program. Savings for the facilities were more than 10 times the program costs.  Of course, the nursing home industry should be improving care because it is the right thing to do instead of doing it to save money but that is another story.

Marilyn Rantz, professor in the MU Sinclair School of Nursing completed a three-year analysis of the Quality Improvement Program of Missouri (QIPMO) and found significant improvements in overall care quality of residents in participating facilities. Last year, a total of 990 residents avoided developing clinical problems, including pressure ulcers, depression symptoms and weight loss, resulting in a total savings of $3.7 million statewide for facilities and health care providers in the state.

The primary goal of quality improvement plans is to improve nursing home care practices. In Missouri, QIPMO is a cooperative service of the Sinclair School of Nursing and the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services; it was created to pair facilities with gerontological nurse experts. The nurses perform on-site visits to offer technical assistance, care-planning help and clinical consultations. One of the nurses' primary functions is to identify "best practices" for care procedures and make such information available throughout the state.

"Quality improvement is cost effective for everyone involved," Rantz said. "Focusing efforts to improve quality of care not only helps to improve that care and the positive outcomes for people, but it also saves the industry and facilities money."

In the study, Rantz found that the cost savings for each year exceeded the total program cost by more than $1 million. Statewide trends among residents included improvements in pain, fall reduction and pressure ulcer reduction, and fewer tube feedings and restraint reduction.

QIPMO is funded through Missouri's Nursing Facility Quality of Care Fund, which is generated from care facilities paying taxes according to the number of beds in their facilities. The cost per facility to use the program was less than $3 per bed.

"The impact on improving the quality of care by expert gerontological nurses consulting in nursing homes is significant in addition to the cost savings for the facilities and health care system in general," Rantz said. "The role of these nurses should be embraced by state agencies, nursing home providers and consumers as an ongoing strategy to continuously improve the quality of nursing home care."

Throughout 2007-08, QIPMO nurses made 855 contacts with 246 different facilities in the state, and they made 417 site visits in 227 nursing facilities. Results showed that facilities who participated did improve, and costs of care problems were reduced.

The study, "Helping Nursing Homes ‘At risk' for Quality Problems: A Statewide Evaluation," was co-authored by several MU researchers and will be published in the July/August 2009 issue of Geriatric Nursing. For more information about QIPMO statistics, visit: www.nursinghomehelp.org/stats.html
 

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Vermont Legislative Study Tackles Direct Care Workforce: Study Reveals that Wages, Health Coverage, Training are Keys to Retention
Published by hthier on April 7, 2008 in Press Releases .

Montpelier, VT, March 25, 2008 –An impending health care crisis has not gone unnoticed in the Green Mountain State. The number of Vermonters age 65 and older is expected to double between 2005 and 2030 while the direct-care workforce continues to decline. A new study funded by the Department of Disabilities, Aging & Independent Living, The Community of Vermont Elders, and PHI has made nine recommendations to help avert this crisis. The Legislative Study of the Direct Care Workforce in Vermont reveals that wages, benefits and training are critical to retaining workers in this field.

LEGISLATIVE STUDY RESULTS
The study analyzed survey responses from 1,700 direct-care workers in Vermont regarding wages, benefits, training, and career development. Key findings include:

Only half of the respondents expect to receive a raise. The forces of inflation, without annual cost-of-living increases, actually decrease wages over time. The responses show that the higher the wage, the longer caregivers remain in the profession.
Only one-third of direct-care workers in Vermont receive health insurance coverage as an employment benefit. However, workers with employee-sponsored health coverage remain in their jobs an average of 2.5 years longer.
Only 42 percent of respondents received formal job training. Those caregivers who do receive professional training remain in their jobs significantly longer.
Direct-care workers currently see few opportunities for advancement because of a lack of standardized and portable curricula and credentials. However, national research shows that workers who receive training, recognition, and advancement opportunities tend to remain in their profession.
Other results from the study show that 64 percent of Vermont’s current direct-care workers are over the age of 40.
In anticipation of the report, workforce and consumer advocates (the Community of Vermont Elders, the Vermont Association of Professional Care Providers, the Vermont Center for Independent Living and PHI) joined forces at a recent town meeting that featured Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, members of the community, and direct-care workers, who gathered to address the need to support caregivers.

Several direct-care workers spoke candidly about the profession, noting the low wages, poor benefits, and lack of training for what is a remarkably difficult job.

Deborah Lisi-Baker, the executive director of Vermont Center for Independent Living, spoke about the need to improve the lives of caretakers to address the current and expected future declines of the workforce.

Direct-care workers provide crucial hands-on assistance to persons who are unable to perform basic activities of daily living (ADL) that many take for granted. Examples of ADLs include getting out of bed, attending to personal hygiene, eating, and other such tasks. Some people need help communicating, remembering, or simply engaging in meaningful activities. These workers provide 80 to 90 percent of the hands-on care for Vermont’s elders, children and adults with disabilities, and persons with chronic conditions.

PHI, a nonprofit organization that supports quality long-term care by improving direct-care jobs and served on the study group’s advisory board, notes that the Vermont study echoes their findings that direct-care workers are truly invested in their work and want to make a positive difference in other people’s lives.

However, PHI also notes that the common industry practices—including low wages, few opportunities for advancement, lack of training, and inadequate benefits—make it difficult to attract new workers and retain current ones in this field. This problem will only grow in the future, unless the state focuses on improving the quality of direct-care jobs.

For more information on this study, visit www.dail.vermont.gov.

Contact:
Alexandra Olins
PHI Northern New England Regional Director
802.655.4615
aolins@PHInational.org

Alan Krawitz
Youngworth Public Relations
800.615.1230, ext. 18
newsroom@youngworthpr.com

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