Here is a picture of a nursing home administrator’s best friend.  No, not my dog!  It’s the watermelon book sitting behind him. (Although, my Boston Terrier, Maverick,  ranks right up there, too!) The Long Term Care Survey book, F-tag book, or any other name you might call it is commonly referred to as the “Watermelon Book” in our circles.  It’s called the watermelon book because of the color...

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...

No matter how good of a job you do personally, you’re only as good as your worst empolyee.  So, if your CNA is in a hurry and doesn’t respond to a resident’s questions in a respectful manner, or if a call light stays on for 20 minutes and your charge nurse is at the nurses station while the CNAs are busy in other rooms, or even if a dietary staff member doesn’t take the time to see if they have some tomato soup for...