For Immediate Release
Contact: Kaitlin Konecke, Marketing Manager
Phone: 410-337-9585 x181
Email: kkonecke@healthpropress.com
A guide for long-term care leaders has the potential to transform your organization
Baltimore, MD (February 15, 2018) — Health Professions Press has just released A Long-Term Care Leader’s Guide to High Performance: Doing Better Together by Cathie Brady, David Farrell, and Barbara Frank, authors with a proven track record of success working with nursing homes to develop the systems, staff, and processes to maintain the highest practicable well-being for every resident, every day. This follow-up to their award-winning book Meeting the Leadership Challenge in Long-Term Care provides a blueprint to achieve continuous quality improvement by implementing a coordinated set of key practices.
The book begins with an impactful account of co-author David Farrell’s experience working with a struggling inner-city nursing home. When he arrived, Farrell, a licensed nursing home administrator, found it was the kind of place that many people probably imagine nursing homes to be—residents screaming out, broken geriatric chairs, the odor of cigarettes and urine, rats in the basement, overflowing charts, and on and on. The situation was utter chaos, for staff and residents.
It was also a nursing home that is, unfortunately, all too common across the country. A 2011 study by researchers from Brown University identified similarities among the more than 1,700 skilled nursing facilities nationwide that had closed over the previous 10 years. This nursing home had every variable the researchers identified as a condition that increased its likelihood of closure.
Farrell saw striking similarities to other nursing homes he had worked with. “In my eyes,” he recalls, “this home had nowhere to go but up. My experience taught me that you can turn these situations around.” Farrell details, step by step, exactly how he turned this failing nursing home into a successful, thriving community.
Brady, Farrell, and Frank then go on to walk readers through how to achieve the same success in their long-term care organizations by putting into action leadership “bundles”—a coordinated and interconnected system of well-established best practices that meet federal guidelines for individualized care. The bundles build off each other to bring out the best in staff, maintain staff stability, and maximize teamwork. Communication and high-involvement among all staff levels is monumental for a nursing home to thrive and to deliver the right care for every resident, every day.
A Long-Term Care Leader’s Guide to High Performance is highly practical, as well as an inspiring read. Included throughout are candid accounts from nursing homes leaders, their stories, their struggles, and the positive results they’ve seen from implementing the bundles—enhanced staff performance, engagement and retention; improved dementia care; fewer avoidable rehospitalizations; and increased resident, family, and staff satisfaction. The book’s comprehensive index allows you to easily locate key practices throughout the book, and a set of five accompanying downloadable how-to guides walk you through how to apply the bundles to specific quality improvement goals (such as with the medication pass, position-change alarms, and off-label use of antipsychotics).
The authors stress that the bundles of best practices don’t take more time; they actually save time. “When leaders conscientiously use their time differently,” Brady, Farrell, and Frank point out, “[by] getting out of their office, asking staff what they think, and delivering on what staff need, . . . leaders prevent problems or catch them early enough to address them while they are still manageable. Doing so saves time and improves care outcomes.”
“This work is innovative,” declares Amy E. Elliot, Ph.D., a research and evaluation consultant. “It is exciting. It has the potential to positively impact countless individuals providing and receiving care.”
The helpfulness of A Long-Term Care Leader’s Guide to High Performance will ensure that it’s dog-eared with use in providing nursing home leaders with the key practices to deliver high-quality, person-centered care.
For more information on A Long-Term Care Leader’s Guide to High Performance: Doing Better Together, visit www.healthpropress.com/brady.
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About Health Professions Press, Inc.
Health Professions Press, Inc. (Baltimore, MD), is a publisher of high-quality educational resources for professionals interested in wellness and aging, long-term care, elder care, Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias, and healthcare management. Visit www.healthpropress.com to learn more about this independent company, its vision, mission, and ever-growing list of publications.
About the Authors
Cathie Brady, M.S. and Barbara Frank, M.P.A., have long histories of advocating for and contributing to improvements in long-term care. They are co-founders of B&F Consulting, which supports nursing facilities through regional, statewide, and national initiatives to stabilize staffing, individualize care, and improve organizational performance. David Farrell, M.S.W., L.N.H.A., is a licensed nursing home administrator with in-depth, diverse healthcare operations management and quality improvement experience. With his track record of success, he is a nationally recognized leader in quality improvement, workforce retention, and culture change.
