A recent proposal may mean sweeping changes for your long-term care customers.
Improved healthcare plans, updated infection prevention programs and more choices on the lunch and dinner menu are just a few of the changes recently proposed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. If finalized, your customers will appreciate such transformations, as well as assistance from their sales reps in preparing to meet them head on.
The proposal, which was announced in July at the White House Conference on Aging, is seeking changes to improve the care and safety of the nearly 1.5 million residents in over 15,000 long-term care facilities and nursing homes participating in Medicare and Medicaid programs, according to Health and Human Services. If finalized, the agency anticipates seeing unnecessary hospital readmissions and infections reduced, quality care increased, and safety measures strengthened for the residents in these facilities.
What’s in store
Many of the proposals build on improvements that nursing homes have already made since 1991, when the conditions of Medicare/Medicaid participation were last comprehensively updated. The new rule would bring these best practices for resident care to all participating facilities and implement a number of important safeguards that have been identified by patient advocates and other stakeholders, including additional protections required by the Affordable Care Act.
Changes would ensure that:
- Nursing home staff are properly trained on caring for residents with dementia and in preventing elder abuse.
- Nursing homes consider the health of residents when making decisions on the kinds and levels of staffing a facility needs to properly take care of its residents.
- Staff members have the right skill sets and competencies to provide person-centered care to residents. The care plan developed will take the resident’s goals of care and preferences into consideration.
- Facilities focus on improving care planning, including discharge planning for all residents with involvement of the facility’s interdisciplinary team and consideration of the caregiver’s capacity, giving residents information they need for follow-up, and ensuring that instructions are transmitted to any receiving facilities or services.
- Dietitians and therapy providers are authorized to write orders in their areas of expertise when a physician delegates the responsibility and state licensing laws allow.
- Residents have greater food choices, and nursing homes have greater flexibility in providing these choices.
- Each long-term-care facility/nursing home’s infection prevention and control program is updated. This includes requiring an infection prevention and control officer, and an antibiotic stewardship program with antibiotic-use protocols and a system to monitor antibiotic use.
- Nursing home residents have greater rights, and limits are placed on when and how binding arbitration agreements may be used.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) set out to revise the long-term care standards to meet the President’s Executive Order that all Federal agencies identify rules that are obsolete or unnecessary and make proposals to “modify, streamline, expand, or repeal them.” The recommended reforms were published in proposed rule CMS-3260-P, in the July 16, 2015 Federal Register.