October 7, 2014 |

LTSS quality important to evaluate: report

Performance measurement and improvement firm National Research Corp. released the 2014 version of its annual study, "Empowering Customer-Centric Healthcare Across the Continuum," on the first day of the American Health Care Association/National Center for Assisted Living annual meeting. It is available at no charge online, and an executive summary is available at booth 1229 at the convention.

This year’s report uses data gathered from the company's My InnerView and OCS HomeCare tools to analyze the main components related to quality measurement of long-term services and supports (LTSS) providers. It is designed to help them implement improvement strategies.

Key findings:

Focusing on excellence scores can help differentiate performance and inform meaningful performance improvement.

A positive correlation exists between many quality measures, such as the finding that high employee satisfaction leads to high resident satisfaction in assisted living communities.

The top three drivers of employee satisfaction are identical to every post-acute setting measured.

Organizations are much more likely to see increases and decreases in their scores in any given year.

Improvement benchmarks broken out by starting score are valuable for setting appropriate and achievable improvement goals.

“With the elder population rising as quickly as it is, now is the time to focus on developing a wide range of LTSS that offer greater value and best help seniors maintain a high quality of life,” says report author Christine Lang. “We hope providers find this report meaningful to inform their understanding of the quality measures that are important to long-term care stakeholders and to direct the implementation of improvement strategies in their communities.”

I Advance Senior Care

I Advance Senior Care is the industry-leading source for practical, in-depth, business-building, and resident care information for owners, executives, administrators, and directors of nursing at assisted living communities, skilled nursing facilities, post-acute facilities, and continuing care retirement communities. The I Advance Senior Care editorial team and industry experts provide market analysis, strategic direction, policy commentary, clinical best-practices, business management, and technology breakthroughs.

I Advance Senior Care is part of the Institute for the Advancement of Senior Care and published by Plain-English Health Care.