We are pleased to invite you to attend the CALTCM 2015 Annual Meeting on April 24 & 25 at the Omni Hotel Los Angeles at California Plaza.   This year’s annual meeting will shine the spotlight on “2015 Hot Topics”, “Care Coordination”, and “Patient Safety”.  Our course will be preceded by a half-day pre-conference seminar on a proven method for team building in the care of dementia patients across the LTC spectrum.

by Flora Y. Bessey, Pharm. D., CGP

The CALTCM mid-year board meeting took place this year on the beautiful UC-Davis Sacramento medical center campus.  This meeting marked an historical moment in the history of CALTCM as it was the first meeting presided over by our first ever non-physician president, Debra Bakerjian, PhD, APRN, FAAN, FAANP.  Committee reports were shared and the overall health of the organization was discussed.  

The Changing Landscape of Payment Models

Healthcare payment models are undergoing a transformation, incentivizing providers to shift from the 

paradigm of “A for effort” to “A for outcomes.” These new payment models include penalties and 

incentives to manage care more efficiently and are gaining traction in this changing healthcare 

environment. One such model for a nursing home value-based purchasing program for readmissions

reduction, H.R. 4302 Protecting Access to Medicare Act of 2014, goes into effect in October 2018,1 

with the publication of facility readmission rates scheduled to go live on Nursing Home Compare by 

October 2017.2

by Tim Gieseke MD, CMD

My decision to attend this past September’s CA Health Facility Foundation CME program was largely driven by my awareness that Sue Ann Guildermann would be presenting again on the Empira Fall Prevention Program. She is part of Empira, a Minneapolis company that does focused QAPI projects for a consortium of SNF companies using outcomes data submitted by these companies.  Her presentation on Falls Management was comprehensive, evidence-based, and challenged some strategies that I and my facilities have adopted as reasonable interventions to reduce Fall risk as well as the risk of injury should a fall occur.