2017 AMDA Conference

This session will present a comprehensive approach to nursing home improvement based on key clinical and management principles, focusing on clinical reasoning. The presenters are jointly responsible for overseeing approximately 60 facilities across multiple states as regional medical directors. In collaboration with those of other key disciplines, they have conceived, developed, and implemented a program that cuts across all measures and topics. The “Thinking Right and Acting Right” program, based on clinical reasoning and across-the-board accountability, has been deployed successfully across multiple facilities and in multiple states. This session will show in detail how this common approach has led to multiple desirable outcomes including sustained improvement in care, improvement in diverse quality measures, better regulatory survey outcomes, more effective medical practitioner roles, and a general strengthening of facility processes and systems. The session will show in detail how medical directors can provide leadership for comprehensive, facility-wide improvement of care and performance in nursing homes. Actual cases and data will be presented to show how this common approach is sustainable and reproducible across settings, and can be understood and applied by those of all disciplines, not just medical practitioners.

Learning Objectives:
(1) Identify key clinical and management principles for meaningful and sustained improvement in a nursing home's care and performance.
(2) Discuss the critical role of medical directors in leading a nursing home to analyze and improve its entire approach to care.
(3) Identify and address in meaningful ways challenges to improvement including the major impact of cognitive biases on care quality.
(4) Implement meaningful, sustained improvement in a nursing facility using efficient and effective clinical and management strategies.