Do You Know Your Residents’ Drug Allergies?
Residents may have an allergy to a medication. It is important to determine if a resident has drug allergies during the pre-admission appraisal process. This information can be obtained from:
Professional Caregiver Blog
Professional Caregiver – A Care and Compliance Group Blog for Assisted Living and Residential Care Professionals
Criminal Clearance and Hospice Volunteers
In last week’s Tuesday Tip we clarified criminal clearance requirements for volunteers. Pathways Home Health and Hospice sent us this important reminder that volunteers from a hospice agency are exempt from the criminal clearance process:
10 Steps to Better Documentation
Maintaining accurate and complete records is an important part of operating an Assisted Living Community. Good documentation can help to ensure consistent quality care for your residents, and help to protect your liability. When reviewing your documentation practices, keep these basics in mind:
Can a Nurse Practitioner Sign a “Physician’s Report?”
Tip: Can a Nurse Practitioner Sign a “Physician’s Report?” A Tuesday Tip subscriber emailed us with the following question: “Can a nurse practitioner complete and sign the Physician’s Report? Does the physician need to co-sign?”
Put Your Charts on a Diet!
Are your resident charts getting too heavy to handle? Residents often live in assisted living and residential care communities for many years, and as time goes by the number of assessments, physician orders, narrative entries, and other chart documents can start to become overwhelming. To keep things manageable and easy-to-use it is a good idea [...]
Tracking and Trending Falls
We recently received the following question from a Tuesday Tip reader: “We are looking for…data collection and analysis tools providers have found that are useful on the prevention and reduction of falls with elderly patients. Any suggestions would be appreciated.”
Refrigerator and Freezer Temperatures
Safe storage of food is important to for ensuring resident health and wellbeing, and part of keeping food safe is ensuring that it is stored at a safe temperature. Refrigerators should be maintained to a maximum of 40 degrees F (some states require 39 degrees F), and freezers to a maximum of 0 degrees F. [...]
Use of Window Restrictors
A Tuesday Tip subscriber recently emailed to ask us about installing window restrictor to prevent residents from eloping through a window: “What is your opinion of using window restrictors in dementia units to prevent elopement through windows?”
Safeguard Your Narcotics
On Monday we held our our 2010 Assisted Living Medication Summit, and we heard from several presenters and speakers of an increase in narcotic thefts in communities around the country. While we do not have any hard statistics to confirm this, it does remind us of the importance of safeguarding narcotics in your community. The [...]
Take Care of Your Staff
With the holiday season in full swing, you have certainly spent lots of time preparing many special events and treats for your residents; but don’t forget about your staff. This is an important time of year for them as well, and it is likely many of them will spend at least part of their holiday [...]