News

More than a dozen LeadingAge Minnesota members have completed their 5-Step Action Plan and will soon be announced to our first-ever Safe Care for Seniors Action Honor Roll. Are you ready to join them? Let us know by completing your Safe Care for Seniors Self-Assessment. 

As we covered in last week’s Advantage, LeadingAge Minnesota in partnership with Voigt, Rode, Boxeth and Coffin have developed sample templates to assist you in developing policies and communications for the new electronic monitoring requirements that go into effect Jan. 1, 2020. The templates are now available!  

As part of the new discharge planning rule that is effective Nov. 29, hospitals are required to provide patients preparing to transition from acute care to post-acute care with access to information about their provider choices. The information includes performance on quality and resource utilization measures, such as number of pressure ulcers, proportion of falls that lead to injury, and number of readmissions back to the hospital.  

The new electronic monitoring requirements for nursing homes and assisted living go into effect Jan. 1, 2020. To help you prepare for the new requirements, we will soon provide you with templates you can use to develop policies and communicate the changes to residents and staff. 

The former president and chief executive officer of the Minnesota Hospital Association (MHA), Lawrence “Lorry” Massa passed away peacefully at his home in Alexandria on Nov. 22. 

LeadingAge Minnesota last week submitted recommendations and guidance to the Board of Examiners of Nursing Home Administrators (BENHA) on several issues related to rules development of the Licensed Assisted Living Director credential. 

To help us better understand the state of employee engagement practices in senior care, we are asking for your participation in a brief survey. As a leader in senior care, you offer critical insights that will help us understand what engagement approaches are being used and discover optimal methods for improving retention and performance through engagement.  

The Minnesota Nursing Home Report Card has added the results of the short-term stay resident surveys to the star rating.  

The Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) has issued the final version of the Minnesota Home Care Bill of Rights. These changes were approved by the Minnesota Legislature during the 2019 legislative session and were effective Aug. 1, 2019. MDH worked closely with consumer and provider stakeholders on updating the versions, which enhanced the clarity of this important information. 

The two rulemaking processes designed to flesh out the details related to the assisted living licensure and licensed assisted living directors under the 2019 Elder Care and Vulnerable Adult Protection Act are underway. 

Neglect of care continues to be among the highest category of OHFC substantiated events across care centers and assisted living/home care settings. Our latest edition of the Learnings from OHFC Substantiated Cases provides on overview of this data, emerging themes, and ideas you should consider in your internal safety and improvement efforts. 

Heard about Safe Care for Seniors and want to know more? Ready to join the movement that is sweeping across aging services settings in Minnesota? Join us on Tuesday, Dec. 3 at 11 a.m. for The Basics: An Introduction to Safe Care for Seniors webinar. The audience for this webinar is LeadingAge Minnesota members who have not yet made the Safe Care for Seniors pledge.  

More than 450 aging services providers across Minnesota have made the Safe Care for Seniors pledge and committed their organization to implementing a five-step action plan that will prevent harm in the course of caregiving. 

The Diversity & Inclusion Council at Ecumen was recently recognized with a Make Zero Harm Possible award from LeadingAge Minnesota. The award recognizes individuals and staff teams in aging services settings who demonstrate their commitment to safe, quality care and to treating people with respect and dignity – always.  

LeadingAge Minnesota members can now access a new, free tool that will help address one of the biggest needs we hear from providers across the state: behavioral health. The Behavioral Health Training Series: Improving Care With Curiosity and Empathy provides easy-to-understand concepts, practical tips, and professional development that will help prepare staff to work with older adults with behavioral health needs.  

The LeadingAge Minnesota Foundation is excited to announce it is now accepting Request for Proposals (RFPs) for the second round of the Project ECHO Assisted Living Communities program. The deadline for submission is Friday, Nov. 15. 

Thinking of ways to expose potential employees to your community for possible recruitment? Give the prospective employee – and you – a chance to try out older adult services by creating a new position called a Resident Concierge Representative (RCR). Cassia, an affiliation between Elim Care and Augustana Care, created this new position at a few of its sites and is already seeing positive outcomes in recruitment and retention.   

Assisted living residents, family members, advocates, providers and other stakeholders can help the Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS) develop a new Assisted Living Report Card by completing an online survey and/or attending a statewide livestream event in November. 

We have launched our new membership database, and are excited to introduce you to a new feature that gives you more control over your user account, event registration, ordering from our online store and more! Meet My.LeadingAgeMN.org. Our new Community Hub is a member-facing online portal that allows you to:  

Despite advocacy from LeadingAge, its members and other stakeholders (see McKnight’s Long-Term Care News for reporting on recent efforts and this opinion piece from LeadingAge CEO Katie Sloan), the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) will proceed with its plan to use a Consumer Alert Icon on Nursing Home Compare beginning Oct. 23 to identify settings with instances of non-compliance related to abuse, neglect and exploitation. It will also cap the Health Inspections rating under the Five-Star Quality Rating System at two stars for settings that receive the icon.