Today we have a guest post from Kitty Holman on the subject of Nursing Home Disaster Preparedness.  Enjoy!        Disaster Preparedness in Nursing Homes: Some Thoughts Ever since Hurricane Katrina hit, nursing homes and care facilities have been working to improve their disaster preparedness and response plans. The hurricane prompted a review of these disaster plans; in fact, many state health departments updated their disaster...

Can you believe this?! From:  SFGATE “California investigators are trying to determine how a 94-year-old woman ended up in a freezer at an upscale retirement home. The Los Angeles Times said Saturday that the California Department of Social Services is investigating the Oct. 28 incident, when the employees of Silverado Senior Living in Calabasas could not find one of their 60 residents. State records say that after a search of the...

Believe it or not, 90%+ of the staff members working in a nursing home have no idea of how the facility is assigned deficiencies (usually called tags or F-tags) or what the letter grade it receives actually means.  I am going to give you a quick and easy look at how deficiencies are cited per the scope & severity grid I included below. SCOPE As you can see, we have a box with several columns and rows of letters.  The columns...