One of the mistakes that many of us make when our facility is census-challenged is to begin taking and admitting whatever referrals we can get.  This can create tons of problems in your facility.  Obviously, a good rule of thumb is to ensure that clinically you can take of the patient, that financially they have a payor source, and you’re not going to lose money on them.  However, there are other factors to consider.  Namely,...

I have a picture in my office that I have had for several years.  I bought it back when I was at a particularly stressful facility going through what must have been the world’s worst survey process.  The State just wouldn’t clear this facility and I was out of ideas.  Sometimes, when you are having those moments of desperation, you want to give up. I bought this picture to remind me that other people go through the same...

For the past few years, everytime I took over a new facility, one of the first things I did was to distribute my BASICS MEMO to each and every employee and go through it with them in my first inservice.  Then, every new hire orientation had time set aside for me to personally sit down with new team members and go over the basics with them, too. The BASICS MEMO was compiled after having to troubleshoot many facilities and seeing the same...

Every facility at one point or another will have to come to terms with the expression of sexuality by their residents.  This creates a ton of confusion with the staff, administration, corporate, families, ombudsman, and surveyors. To tell you the truth, it can be very confusing if you’ve never had to deal with it before or had no one to teach you.  That was the case for me, as well.  So, after having dealt with a few of these...

So you want to become a great nursing home administrator.  But you find yourself not quite attaining the level of success you aspire to.  Have you asked yourself one simple question:  What am I doing wrong? You want to accomplish great things in this long term care industry we call home.  Here are 10 points to consider.  If you’re doing any of  these, it could very well be the roadblock on your highway to success. 1.  Not...

I recently encountered an issue with the way employees are being paid in one facility.  It seems that at one point, the Nurse Administration team members other than the DON - ADON, RN supervisors, MDS, support staff, etc. were all paid hourly.  That’s fine.  They simply need to manage their hours to avoid unnecessary and unapproved overtime.  However, one of the Nurse Admin team members ended up having to work the floor in a...