Introduction
Nursing home care refers to nursing care and related services provided to an in-patient by a state-licensed or certified facility other than a hospital. This research focuses on a nursing home care entity known as Magnolia Manor, located in California. These homes provide any form of care, which is given to ill persons in their homes, which comprise physical, psychological, comforting, and divine activities. Patients in all contexts should receive care tailored to their individual needs rather than what is most practical for the medical staff. To achieve this, the wellbeing care scheme must be transformed. The role and responsibilities of several health specialists, including nurses, need to be basically reviewed to renovate the health care scheme. New opportunities for new roles will arise due to the new health care structures outlined by the Affordable Care Act of 2010 (Keith, 2020). Numerous plans and projects have already been created to aim necessary enhancements in value, access, and quality, and many more are still in the works. This study explains the unique features that can be incorporated to improve care recipients and the Magnolia Manor resident experience.
Background
City Profile
California has the highest population in the country, with about 39.5 million residents. Adults in California enjoy access to services and initiatives that could assist them in age comfortably, making up nearly 15% of the population (El Hajj, 2021). The average monthly cost of nursing home care in California is $9,247 for a semi-private house and $11,437 for a private room (El Hajj, 2021). The state has many top-notch facilities, including a few that are among the best in the country for elderly care, and healthcare prices are lower than the average for the country. With over 1,200 nursing care home institutions in the country serving more than 400,000 Californians each year, seniors can also obtain top-notch nursing care (El Hajj, 2021). These facilities offer comprehensive long-term care, including individual care, trained nursing care, therapeutic supervision, and treatments.
Competitive Landscape
Competition between companies has long been promoted across all industries as a way to improve value for patients. Competition guarantees the delivery of improved goods and services to meet consumer demands. Over time, competition has the power to raise value for customers. Cost reductions brought about by quality and workflow improvements raise customer satisfaction. There are a number of well-known nursing homes in California that are considered rivals to Magnolia Manor. Guardian Angel Home Care and Wellmore Skilled Nursing are two of California’s leading facilities for skilled nursing care.
Residential Care, Retention Care, Trained Nursing, and Short-Term Rehabilitation are just a few of the professional nursing service programs offered by Wellmore. It provides amenities such as a 24-hour emergency response system, personalized care plans, daily wellness, and social events, pet-friendly housing, evening grounds security custodian service, weekly laundry and housekeeping, and scheduled transportation. On the other hand, the nursing staff at Guardian Angel offers services, including collaborating with patients, doctors, and close relatives to promote healthy living and independence. Moreover, they provide pediatric care. Care following a stroke or other brain injury, management of enteral feeding, administration, medication management, catheter changes, and continuous, round-the-clock care.
Enhancements
Recommendation 1: Strengthening the Caregiving Staff
According to research from the early stages of the pandemic, the coronavirus was better controlled, and the death rate was lower in healthcare facilities with higher nurse staffing levels. As per investigators from the University of Rochester Medical Center, every 20 minutes of registered nurse coverage was associated with a 22% decrease in Covid 19 cases (Aboumrad et al., 2021). A California investigation achieved similar findings. However, nursing homes only require more caregiving staff to record improvements.
People give nursing home care services; therefore, by enhancing the workforce of caregivers, three methods can be employed to enhance improvements in Magnolia Manor nursing home care. The first tactic is to mandate more excellent minimum staffing ratios to boost the number of employees in nursing facilities. The second strategy entails raising the minimum training standards for those who are employed in nursing care centers, remarkably specialized nurse helpers. To entice and keep more improved competent employees, the nursing homes must enhance salaries, benefits, and working conditions.
Recommendation 2: Employee Training
Staff not receiving proper training is one potential cause of nursing homes’ poor quality. Increased training needs for all categories of nursing home personnel are one way to improve the quality of care, especially given the higher intensity of nursing care residents and the more sophisticated care that is now required. The majority of direct care is provided by certified nurse assistants, who comprise the biggest group of caregivers in nursing homes despite having little official training. OBRA 87 mandates that nursing helpers complete at least 75 hours of admittance exercise, contribute in 12 hours of yearly in-service training, and pass an aptitude test no later than four months after starting work (Lucchini et al., 2019). Some states, like California, need lengthier training periods. Even if the coaching needs are low, they are higher than those for most other low-skill, low-paying occupations, which may discourage some individuals from working in the sector. On the contrary hand, there lacks a corporate ladder for qualified registered nurse aides due to the minimal training requirements. Therefore, training the employees will help improve the Magnolia Manor resident experience.
Recommendation 3: Salaries, Bonuses, and Working Conditions
Nurse assistants who work in nursing homes make meager salaries with few extra perks. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the average hourly pay for nursing assistants in 2000 was approximately $8.61 (Doppelt & Haley, 2020). Doppelt discovered that the median annual salary for nursing home assistants was only $11,000 employing aggregated Current Population Polls from 1995 and 1997(Doppelt & Haley, 2020). Along with poor pay, these employees also receive little extra perks like pension and health insurance.
Increased benefits and earnings for nursing aides should encourage marginal workers to join the workforce. Additionally, rises in the comparative pay for nursing homebased employees may facilitate the transfer of accessible low-wage employees to the long-period healthcare field. The number of workers who may be ready for such shifts is sizable, and work supply elasticity across professions with low educational and training necessities is comparatively strong (Singh & Glavin, 2017). Of course, paying workers more and offering more incredible benefits could also improve their quality of life and help workers work efficiently, improving the Magnolia Manor resident experience.
Recommendation 4: Providing More Information to Consumers
A prevalent approach for refining the eminence of care is to offer patients and their families extra information about the level of upkeep provided by certain care homes so they can make knowledgeable choices about facilities. If consumers are aware of the care quality, they are more likely to choose superior facilities and avoid worse ones. Due to market competition, healthcare quality will inevitably improve. Customers can make choices based on competence because most nursing home services are primarily non-technical. Furthermore, it is considered that simply giving providers the knowledge will motivate them to take action.
Recommendation 5: Increasing Payments to Medicare and Medicaid
The majority of nursing home patients rely on Medicaid and Medicare to cover their medical costs. Therefore, the number of resources accessible to nursing homes depends on these two programs’ reimbursement policies. Since national and government agencies have considerable power over the volume and technique of imbursement, Medicare and Medicaid care facility compensation strategy is predominantly significant as a plan control. Magnolia Manor should focus on policies that will help reimburse these facilities and attract more people.
Recommendation 6: Creating and Putting into Practice Working Guidelines
Nursing homes are accountable for improvements that occur at the micro level when specific caregivers work with specific nursing home residents. Magnolia Manor should create practice standards for a variety of illnesses, such as self-gratification, restraints, ulcers, discomfort, and depression, to aid healthcare providers in providing better technical care. These recommendations aim to close the knowledge gap between clinicians and the literature on clinical research, frequently through algorithms or procedures that direct assessment and therapy.
Conclusion
Initiatives to improve quality and safety are essential throughout the health care system. Quality improvement aims to regulate processes and organizational structure to eliminate variance, create predictable outcomes, and enhance the experience of patients, healthcare organizations, and companies. Although competition is stiff, Magnolia Manor is hoped to be the leading nursing home care soon. Some reform alternatives are believed to bring a significant improvement to Magnolia Manor. These reform alternatives include enhancing the regulatory process, enhancing quality monitoring information systems, enhancing the workforce of caregivers, supplying customers with additional information, enhancing customer advocacy, and altering Medicare as well as Medicaid funding.
References
Aboumrad, M., Shiner, B., Riblet, N., Huizenga, H., Neupane, N., & Young-Xu, Y. (2021). Trends in COVID-19 cases and clinical management in Veterans Health Administration medical facilities: A national cohort study. Plos One, 16(7), e0246217.
El Hajj, K. (2021). Informing policy from prices: An overview of California nursing homes. University of Toronto Journal of Public Health, 2(2).
Keith, K. (2020). Contraceptive mandate, ACA final rules, and COVID-19. Health Affairs, 39(8), 1280-1281.
Lucchini, A., De Felippis, C., Elli, S., & Bambi, S. (2019). The burden of not-weighted factors in nursing workload: Can nursing activities Score be more suitable than TISS 28 and NEMS? Intensive and Critical Care Nursing, 51, 82-83.
Singh, D., & Glavin, P. (2017). An occupational portrait of emotional labor requirements and their health consequences for workers. Work and Occupations, 44(4), 424-466.