Pilgrim Manor has partnered with Indiana State Department of Health and REAL Services to host a free community event to increase awareness about the risks associated with falling for older adults. The event will be held on October 12 at 3:30 p.m. at Pilgrim Manor, 222 Parkview Street in Plymouth. Families of nursing facility residents and community members interested in learning more about fall prevention are invited to attend.
Upon completion, participants will be able to answer the following questions: Why do falls happen? Shouldn’t mom have a personal alarm and bed rails? How is a nursing home different than a hospital? What is the nursing home required to do? This event is part of a larger initiative to improve care for nursing facility residents.
In North Central Indiana, the nursing facilities in five counties (Elkhart, La Porte, Marshall, Kosciusko, and St. Joseph) were invited to join the North Central Indiana Quality Improvement Collaborative (NCIQIC), one of nine collaboratives throughout Indiana implementing the Quality Assurance Process Improvement (QAPI) model. QAPI is an initiative of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) that aims to improve the quality of life, care, and services in long term care facilities with a data-driven, proactive approach.
The NCIQIC is currently in phase 2 of the Regional Healthcare Quality Improvement Collaborative Grant and working on their third quality improvement project, reducing resident falls. In Marshall County, Pilgrim Manor has been actively participating in the initiative and volunteered to host the upcoming fall awareness community event.
In the first phase, facilities who participated throughout Indiana accomplished an overall cost-savings of almost $1.5 million by reducing antipsychotic medication use, improving CNA staff retention, reducing falls, reducing HAI-related hospitalizations, reducing Pneumonia, and reducing UTIs. Locally, the NCIQIC has been improving quality of care and health outcomes. Previous projects resulted in increasing Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) staff retention by 17% and reducing Urinary Tract Infections (UTI) by 56.75%.
