Identify a topic
below relating to the current challenges in the long-term care continuum and
their impact on the current long-term care industry. After choosing your
topic, research scholarly sources and or the Internet to learn more about the
topic. After you have completed your
review, create a 1- to 2-page synopsis in a Microsoft Word document
addressing the main challenges discussed in the paper. Be sure to incorporate
the following:
•
Introduction
and background of the research paper
•
Stakeholders
interested in the study
•
Challenges
in the long-term care continuum
•
Impact
of the challenges on the long-term care system (specifically on staffing,
funding, and regulation)
•
Recommendations
to address the challenges
Support
your responses with examples.
Cite
any sources in APA format.
Note: You can use the
article below to create synopsis or research your own.
Cohen,
M. A. (1998). Emerging trends in the finance and delivery of long-term care:
Public and private opportunities and challenges.The Gerontologist, 38(1),
80-89. Retrieved from
http://search.proquest.com/docview/79724646?accountid=13931
Notes from class
related to challenges faced in long term care
The
current challenges faced in long-term care relate to staffing, funding, and
management. Let's discuss in detail the challenges
related to staffing and management.
Staffing
The
recruitment and retention issues in nursing, assisted living, and subacute care
facilities are as follows:
•
Nursing: Due to increased competition, nursing
facilities face problems in recruiting both highly trained staff and less
highly trained staff. Recruiting and retaining highly trained staff, such as
physicians, therapists, and nurses, is difficult because most hospitals offer
higher salaries. In addition, professionals are more attracted to working in
hospitals than in the more regular routine care in nursing facilities. Finding
doctors who are familiar with specific issues with the geriatric population
creates an added problem. They receive little to no education about specific
geriatric issues in medical school. With a higher acuity of long-term patients
the work load is heavier creating more strenuous work for the employees.
Less
highly paid professionals, such as dietary and housekeeping staff, are offered
better wages in restaurants and retail stores. In addition, in contrast to
nursing facilities, the training requirements in restaurants and retail stores
are less and the choices of shifts are better.
•
Assisted living: Recruitment in assisted living is based on
the nursing facility model. However, most staff members in assisted living
facilities are required to provide consumer services such as meal preparation,
housekeeping, and maintenance. Therefore, the nursing model of staffing is not
a good fit in assisted living facilities.
•
Subacute care: In acute care facilities, services range
from being highly specialized (such as dialysis, intravenous therapy, and wound
management) to less specialized (such as housekeeping and maintenance), and
there has to be a proper mix of staff. However, individuals with specialized
skills are difficult to find. Therefore, the staff needs to be made efficient
by providing it with effective training.
•
CCRCs: Staffing for the different care levels in CCRCs can be
a challenge. Some staff needs to be more clinical while some are more social in
nature. Finding a right balance can be a challenge.
Management
Some
of the most common challenges faced in managing long-term care in nursing,
assisted living, and subacute care facilities are as follows:
•
Nursing: Nursing facilities provide a range of
services such as acute care, assisted living, and home health care. Therefore,
they are subject to a broad range of regulations. To maintain the operation and
management of these facilities, administrators need to constantly balance the
impact of these regulations on the cost and quality of care. In addition, they
need to analyze and identify the services that best suit the nature of the
facilities, including scrutinizing the capabilities of the staff. Reimbursement
levels seem to trend down each year with acuity of residents need increasing.
Administrators are having to constantly look for creative solutions to issues
to reduce waste, stay in budget, and encourage the staff to work together to
provide for residents.
•
Assisted living: Assisted living can modify its services
according to the requirements of its customers. However, the challenge for the
administrators is to advertise their facilities to both the staff and residents
in order to develop an identity for the facilities and market facilities’
services.
•
Subacute care: Subacute care focuses on curing a patient's
particular illness or functional limitation. Therefore, the treatment as well
as the staffing pattern is different than in nursing facilities. The number of
hours per day a staff member is allocated to a patient is also more. In
addition, the staff needs to focus on achieving short-term goals resulting in
the cure of a specific ailment. These differences are sometimes not understood
by facilities, leading to significant functional challenges for administrators.
•
CCRCs: The administrator's role in CCRCs is customer oriented.
They focus on marketing to attract new clientele and monitoring to make sure
residents are in the right living arrangement.
No comments:
Post a Comment