AHCA Expands Quality Care Initiative, Announces New Goals

The American Health Care Association, or AHCA, announced today that it is expanding its existing initiative to improve quality of care in skilled nursing facilities.

The announcement builds on the progress made in the area of quality improvement over the past three years.

The new initiative includes eight measurable goals that center around three priorities: improvements in organizational success, short stay/post-acute care and long-term/dementia care. The targets and priorities include:

Improve organizational success by: 

• Increasing staff stability by decreasing turnover among nursing staff by 15 percent or achieve and maintain a turnover rate of 40 percent or less by March 2018; 
• At least 25 percent of members measuring and reporting long-stay resident and family satisfaction and/or short-stay satisfaction using the Core-Q survey
• Reducing the number of unintended health care outcomes by March 2018 

Improve short-stay/post-acute care by: 

• Safely reducing the number of hospital readmissions within 30 days during a skilled nursing center stay by an additional 15 percent or achieve and maintain a low rate of 10 percent by March 2018 
• Improving discharge back to the community by 10 percent or achieve and maintain a high rate of at least 70 percent by March 2018 
• At least 25 percent of members adopting and using the mobility and self-care sections of the CARE tool and report functional outcome measures using the LTC Trend Tracker 

Improve long-term/dementia care by: 

• Safely reducing the off-label use of antipsychotics in long-stay nursing center residents by an additional 10 percent by December 2015 and 15 percent by December 2016
• Safely reducing hospitalizations among long-stay residents by 15 percent or achieve and maintain a low rate of 10 percent or less by March 2018 

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