I was recently having a conversation with a family member over nursing home staffing.  He was very frustrated that the facility his mother was in would not put another CNA on her hall during the day.  He said that the staff was leaving because they were overloaded. This is a common concern with many families and many nursing home staff members and administrators as well.  What do you do when your budget doesn’t allow you to add...

Vince Lombardi is known as one of the most successful football coaches in the history of the game.  He had a habit of creating winners.  His focus, however, was on fine-tuning each player – helping them become the best they could be.  A lesson can be taken from this as we each have our own team that we coach everyday in the nursing home.  Have your staff become complacent, just meeting the minimums?  What are we doing each day to...

I was having a conversation recently with a couple of other people in the industry.  We were discussing what’s the worst thing about starting out as a new administrator or leader in the nursing home environment. Lack of experience?  Sure.  Dealing with difficult families?  You bet.  Surveys?  Ding, ding.  All those can be very overwhelming for a rookie in our world.  However, I have to say that one of the worst things I had to...

If you haven’t figured it out by now, those of us working in the longterm care industry have a ton of work to do.  I have worked in other industries and this one by far takes the cake with giving you so many tasks you can’t think straight. One of the things that used to drive me crazy is that I couldn’t get finished with all the tasks that had developed during the day in addition to the items already on my agenda.  I...

Several times in my career I’ve had to take a facility that was in it’s survey window and I just knew we were nowhere near ready.  It’s pretty stressful to realize the impending doom that survey can present if they find everything you know is wrong.  And there just isn’t enough time to get everything fixed. There are a few things you can do to improve your odds of having a decent survey at least clinically.  Some...

Taking on a facility?  Want to make sure you don’t make the same mistake that so many administrators before you have in the same building?  It’s all about building your team of department heads and key personnel.  How do you make sure you’re not letting problem employees hang around too long?  They haven’t really done anything to get harsh disciplinary action right now.  Their annual eval is months away.  Yet,...