The illuminated landscape: Unlocking the healing power of photography
By
Daniel Ambrosi
Jun 04, 2014
For centuries, designers, artists, architects and city planners understood that pastoral landscape scenes could elicit rapid and significant recovery from stress. In modern times, this belief has been...
Nurse and therapist are two of the best jobs in the US — or are they?
By
Tim Mullaney
Feb 04, 2014
Registered nurse, physical therapist and nurse practitioner are three of the top 10 jobs in the United States, according to new rankings from U.S. News and World Report. This might come as a big surprise...
Payment reform: Ready! Set! Don’t go! No, I mean go!
By
Steven Littlehale
Apr 23, 2018
Perhaps you think that the new therapy-payment bombshell (RCS-1) has turned out to be a dud. I hope to make the point that it was not.
Sometimes a carrot is really a stick … but sometimes it’s 24-karat gold!
By
Steven Littlehale
Nov 27, 2017
We all yearn for a time when value-based purchasing (and care) loses its originality. A time when motivations for providing excellent care and achieving excellent resident outcomes are aligned with reimbursement.
A natural evolution of the MDS coordinator: Nurse Informaticist
By
Steven Littlehale
Oct 27, 2017
Jennifer Gross, BSN, RN-BC, RAC-CT, fascinates me. Most recently, she completed a graduate certificate program in informatics, a subject that is playing a critical role in the explosion of health information...
Strategies for improving medication management in LTC, Part 2
By
Dorris Yee
Sep 07, 2016
In my last blog, we identified room for improvement in reducing the number of preventable adverse drug events in the LTC setting
Where were YOU when CMS changed the Five-Star rating system?
By
Steven Littlehale
Mar 20, 2015
Some things will always stay etched in our mind. Where were you on February 12, when CMS publicly announced immediate changes to the Five Star Quality Rating System for Nursing Homes?
Cut into some apple pie instead of your MDS staffing budget
By
Steven Littlehale
Nov 05, 2018
It was about an hour after the release of the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ proposed rule for FY19, which contained the big Patient-Driven Payment Model reveal, that a wave of bold and somewhat...
Tips for getting students to visit your facility: a teacher’s perspective
By
Barbara Gottschalk
May 12, 2016
Nothing is unique about students visiting nursing homes, of course, but I’ve been doing it with students for many years and in several different contexts.
The importance of LTC benchmarking
By
Raul Valdes-Perez, Ph.D., and Keith T. Kanel, M.D.
May 06, 2016
An example of a long-term care organization embracing the new marriage of data benchmarking and performance improvement was Pittsburgh Regional Health Initiative’s partnership with the Vincentian...