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For Immediate Release
March 4, 2008
Long-Term Care Profession Sponsors Statewide Program to Benefit
Nursing Home Residents and Families
SPRINGFIELD – A new statewide program will benefit residents and their
family members by streamlining quality
improvements in today’s long-term care
facilities.
The new program, called the Road to Excellence quality initiative,
provides the necessary tools to help
facilities across Illinois develop their own
plans to achieve a higher level of quality
during the next two years.
It is being proposed by the Health Care
Council of Illinois (HCCI), Life Services
Network (LSN), Illinois Council on Long Term
Care (ICLTC) and Illinois Health Care
Association (IHCA).
This is the first time all four associations
have collaborated on such a wide-reaching
program.
According to HCCI Director Pat Comstock, the Road to Excellence quality initiative focuses on three major
objectives:
*Preventing and reducing the incidents of resident pressure ulcers
*Assisting residents in managing and
reducing chronic pain
*Improving resident and family satisfaction
through consistent surveys
The goals of this initiative are to:
*demonstrate the proactive commitment of the long-term care profession to
overall care improvement
*provide individual facilities with the
necessary tools and resources to positively
impact resident care in targeted areas
*monitor success achieved as a result of increased funding for nursing
home residents
“This exciting new program is intended to complement and support the
efforts already being made in our facilities
across the state,” said Dennis Bozzi,
president of LSN. “The areas we are
focusing on have already been designated as
priorities of most facilities.”
The Road to Excellence is
designed to highlight in an organized,
measurable way the overall success of our
individual facilities statewide, said IHCA
Executive Director David Voepel.
Success will be monitored through statewide resident and family
satisfaction surveys. Individual facilities
may also voluntarily participate in a
corresponding staff satisfaction survey.
Terry
Sullivan, executive director of the ICLTC,
said the associations will provide guidance
to facilities through standardized
tools to support and guide the facility’s
overall Quality Assurance program, as well
as provide standardized protocols,
assessment tools, reporting forms and
documentation guides for pressures ulcers
and pain management. Training seminars for
staff on pressure ulcer prevention and pain
management will also be held.
For more information, go to: www.roadtoexcellence.org. |
