Operating a nursing home facility is a complex business. Staying compliant and cost-effective is a challenge in itself, particularly when combined with the need to remain patient-focused. It can be a difficult balancing act to ensure you are running a successful business – which includes keeping your staff happy – while still providing high quality care.
But it can be done! Here are a few ideas to consider that should help improve the processes you already have in place, and thereby help you build a stronger business and care model overall:
- Communicate with residents. It sounds incredibly simple, but communicating with the residents in your facility is very important if you hope to improve care. Currently a number of experts are calling to shift the old culture of nursing homes to a new one that would emphasize encouraging both facility staff and family members to have a dialogue with their elderly patients. “Rather than assuming they need one thing, a better idea would be to simply ask them,” states Atul Gawande, author of Being Mortal. A simple question could be all it takes to boost resident satisfaction – as well as patient care.
- Engage with their families. Involving residents’ family members is another simple trick that can help improve the success of a facility. As discussed in a previous post, the quality of a facility’s care efforts is very important to families as they choose a home for their aging relatives. But in addition to care, families are also interested in accommodating visiting policies, as well as the facility’s overall guest environment. If relatives are encouraged to visit and share meals or activities with patients, then resident satisfaction will likely improve – and so will the reflection on and reviews of your facility.
- Restructure your care model (if possible). Depending on your facility’s budget, this may be a difficult goal to achieve, but new versions of nursing homes are starting to take hold across the country. One of the biggest differences between these new facilities and traditional facilities is that patients have private rooms and staff can concentrate care on small groups of residents, rather than distributing generic care to a multitude of patients. If you cannot afford to restructure, then it’s important to take a strong marketing approach by highlighting the advantages your facility offers that others do not. By sharing information on how you provide quality care and work with other healthcare providers, you can increase your competitive edge in the industry.
- Implement modern care assistance technology. One of the best ways to better your facility is to invest in competitive technology that will improve the quality of your care. For example, wireless patient monitoring systems are able to collect data on residents and send warning signs to staff before an injury can occur. When incidents and reports are prevented, patients receive better care and facilities receive better reviews and reputations.
Overall, running a good business and prioritizing patients can – and should – go hand-in-hand. When you implement strategies that boost both goals, you should be able to see success.
To learn more about an easy way to invest in your facility, be sure to download our brochure and to explore the benefits of Hello Nurse’s own wireless monitoring technology tool.