There is a trend toward liberalization of diets in long-term care to reduce the impact of weight loss and promote quality of life, particularly reducing limitations for elderly residents or those with diabetes. However, there is less emphasis in the nursing home environment on “healthy diet” choices.  Our facility is comprised of many younger long-term brain injured residents suffering from problems associated with long-term poor eating habits, weight gain and obesity, as well as frequent food-related complaints or agitation related to feeling deprived of items seen on others’ plates.

As many of you know the CMS 5 Star QM program as of July 2016 will include measures that will in part be a reflection of a facilities dementia care.  These include rate of return to ED, 30 day re-hospitalizations, Successful discharges to the community, Short stay residents with improved function, Long stay residents with functional decline, and the use of anxiety/hypnotic meds (data collection only at this time).

by Ethan Cumbler M.D., FACP, FHM

Do you know how to tie your shoes and wash your hands?  These are life skills we learned in kindergarten but it turns out that most of us are not using the most effective method to do either task.  Check out the brilliant TED Talk by Terry Moore on a stronger method to tie your shoes. You will probably discover you have been doing it wrong your whole life.  Similarly, a new study demonstrated that a six step method of hand hygiene works better than the way we typically go about cleaning bacteria from our hands. (Click here for the article.)

by Michael R. Wasserman, M.D., CMD

The 2016 Best Practices Summit and 42nd Annual Meeting were a big success!  Last year, CALTCM released a call for Submissions for the Best Implementation Plans which yielded 17 submissions from across California. Last Friday, the top 5 submissions presented their Best Practice Implementation Plans at the 2016 Best Practices Summit.  Attendance at this event exceeded our expectations.  We are happy to congratulate the winners of the 2016 Best Practices Summit: