Q: The buzz has been that the Advancing Excellence campaign will go beyond its original two-year time frame. True?
A: Improvement is happening and those in the campaign are improving faster than those not in it, so we thought, why stop? The feeling probably started to come forward late last fall when we received some data and saw that it truly was working. We’ll have some sort of celebration on the anniversary Sept. 29. We’re thinking of a five-year initiative now.
Q: What are some signs of the success?
A: Almost 44% of all facilities–6,881– are participating. We’ve already reached one of our national goals, for restraints, and we’re starting to see fewer pressure ulcers.
Q: How are participants responding?
A: We’ve had webinars in three goal areas. All had at least 1,100 telephone lines open and at one, we had 1,800, with about 5,000 people on the call. That is nothing short of astonishing. That’s about 10% of the industry at one time. There’s a real hunger out there for this kind of information.
Q: What do you tell lingering skeptics?
A: This is not just us feeling good about it. We can look at the numbers. We’re tracking participants over time so we can see the difference. It’s not one of those “sign up and you’re done” type of things. It’s a “sign-up and start working hard” thing.
For more on the campaign, visit nhqualitycampaign.org.
From the July 01, 2008 Issue of McKnight's Long-Term Care News
