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Avoid hospitalizations to keep residents healthy

LTC Liability Monitor, July 5, 2006

Reducing your residents' trips to the hospital will save them in unnecessary trauma and illness, reported The Boston Globe. Nursing homes could prevent more than one-third of all resident hospitalizations if nursing staff recognized symptoms of increasing illness sooner and doctors were more readily available at the nursing homes, a National Institute of Aging study said. Some facilities are trying out new methods to reduce resident hospitalization such as telemedicine, which keeps physicians on call at night and on the weekends. Others are using nurse practitioners who are on call 24 hours a day. Researchers in the study used Medicare records to conclude that over a five-month period, 37% of the hospitalizations of long-term care residents at urban nursing homes nationwide were potentially avoidable, reported the Globe.

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