Advancing Excellence in America's Nursing Homes

 

 

Advancing Excellence in America's Nursing Homes is an initiative that launched in September 2006 with Commonwealth Fund and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services support. The voluntary campaign is reinvigorating efforts to improve the quality of care and quality of life for those living or recuperating in America's nursing homes. Participating providers commit to focusing on at least three of the eight measurable goals, with at least one quality-related goal, such as reducing staff turnover, and one care process goal. To date, over half of all nursing homes in America—more than 9,000 facilities—have signed up.

Nursing homes can access tools for tracking improvement and comparing facilities’ performance, learn about evidence-based practices, and participate in free training webinars through the campaign’s Web site, www.nhqualitycampaign.org.

Advancing Excellence was recently incorporated as a not-for-profit educational organization, led by a board representing all those with a major stake in high-quality nursing home care. The effort is supported by state stakeholder coalitions called Local Area Networks for Excellence, or LANEs, that recruit providers, consumers, and frontline workers and lend technical assistance to nursing homes.

The co-chairs for the 2012–14 term are David Gifford, M.D., M.P.H., senior vice president for quality and regulatory affairs at the American Health Care Association, and Cheryl Phillips, M.D., senior vice president for advocacy at Leading Age. Carol Benner, Sc.M., is the national director of the campaign.

In January 2012, the organization updated its campaign goals and objectives, which include:

• improve staff stability; 
• increase use of consistent assignment; 
• increase person-centered planning and decision-making; 
• reduce hospitalizations safely; 
• use medications appropriately; 
• increase resident mobility; 
• prevent and manage infections safely; 
• reduce pressure ulcers; and 
• decrease symptoms of pain.

For more information, visit www.nhqualitycampaign.org.