Leading LTC Data and Service Organizations Partner to Deliver

 

Five organizations that serve Long Term Care facilities have teamed up to create Tracking-19, a free resource that helps nursing homes to manage the exponential increase in the number of COVID-19 related requirements.  SNF Metrics, SHOPP, PRIME SOURCE, Zimmet Healthcare, and People Powered Nursing created Tracking-19 and the associated app that fills a desperate need for reliable and efficient infection tracking and reporting for both residents and employees. The app also helps nursing homes meet continually changing reporting expectations by government bodies like the CDC, and State and County Health Officials. The benefits beyond COVID-19 will be the ability to track signs and symptoms for residents to get ahead of infection outbreaks. 

 

“Long term care facilities have their hands full during the pandemic caring for residents and ensuring their employees are healthy and safe.” said Ken Berger, COO of SNF Metrics. “Add to this, the new reporting demands and employee testing requirements. This puts an impossible strain on LTC organizations already struggling to cope with the toll this virus has taken on the industry.”

 

 

The complimentary app offered on Tracking19.com takes the guesswork out of employee and resident COVID-19 testing, tracking and reporting. Facilities can easily use the app to input line listing and employee testing data from any department or any facility. The app, updated daily, will always have the latest reporting requests and formatting so facilities can devote more time to resident care and employee safety and not struggle with version control, time-consuming duplication, manual tracking and careless errors as a result of unimaginable workloads. 

 

“This gives all parties the confidence to win in this pandemic,” said Michael Greenfield, CEO of PRIME SOURCE.  “Residents are getting the best care, employees know they are working in a safe environment with reduced risk of infection to themselves or the residents they care for, our government partners are getting the data they need, residents’ families feel relieved their loved ones are in good hands and the facility operators have the right data to know they are running their organizations in the best way possible under unimaginable circumstances.”

Country-wide, long term care facilities face steep financial penalties, and could face permanent closure of their facilities if they are not able to comply with the changing government reporting demands. 

 

 

Tracking-19 is available now and is free to facility operators in the USA. Visit https://tracking19.com/. Tracking-19 is the result of expert collaboration between five industry-leading private companies: The Society for Healthcare Organization Procurement Professionals https://shopp.org/; People Powered Nursing https://peoplepowerednursing.com/; Prime Source http://primesourcehcs.com/; SNF Metrics https://snfmetrics.com/; and Zimmet Healthcare Services Group https://www.zhealthcare.com/

It seems we have an acronym for everything- CMS, DPH, MDS, IDT to name a few.   It’s a surprise to no one that the world of LTC is a big bowl of alphabet soup. And now the dreaded COVID-19 joins the list of names and acronyms that we have to address.

Its been a rough and tragic time for our industry with much illness, death, negative media, and severe lack of supplies and staffing. Under this level of attention and scrutiny, our facilities are faced with an ever-increasing list of metrics to track and manage.

I expect that in the wake of COVID-19 , tracking our numbers and using them to take calculated action will be essential to our survival as an industry.

But, what data do we need to know and track in this new COVID world?

Line Listing

If you’ve never heard of line listing before COVID, you sure are intimate with the concept now.

The CDC defines it as “one type of epidemiologic database and is organized like a spreadsheet with rows and columns. Typically, each row is called a record or observation and represents one person or cause of disease.”  I define it as my COVID Survival Document.   It is the basis of tracking the disease in your facility and a template for completing the many documents that have to be submitted to the State, County, and CDC on sometimes a daily basis.  The data in this spreadsheet needs to be accurate and consistent and this can be a tedious task.

According to a CMS Memorandum of May 19, 2020 COVID  “all nursing home staff (including volunteers and vendors who are in the facility on a weekly basis) to receive a single baseline COVID-19 test, with re-testing of all staff continuing every week.”  While there is an ability for state or local leaders to adjust the requirements- there will be requirements.   This tracking will become a very difficult job for the already overtaxed HR departments.

 

 

Temperatures and Oxygen Saturation

Anyone who has attempted to buy a thermometer lately knows they are in high demand.  In fact, let me know where you find one!

As providers, we are scrambling to find a data set that gives us an early warning. This early warning is the key to reducing the risk of infection. We are looking for data insights that we can trust and will inform our actions.   Many facilities are now routinely tracking temperatures of residents and staff and carefully looking at resident oxygen saturations.  Make sure you create the policies and the processes to track this information in a way that is easy to access, both for data input and data analysis.

Staffing/ PPE

Having worked in LTC for most of my professional career, I cannot recall a time where tracking of Staffing and Personal Protection Equipment has been more critical.  We are carefully tracking these precious supplies and calculating utilization and need on a daily if not hourly basis.  Looking forward, I think it will be essential to have a clear “story” of what supplies were available and what we did regarding shortage- both for staff and PPE.

 

Timeline:

Looking into the not so distant future, I anticipate we will see an increase in lawsuits and serious DPH findings with expensive fines and penalties.  It’s critical to also track all the things WE HAVE DONE RIGHT.  We should keep a careful dateline of all the things that were done by the facility and how we responded at every step of the way.

 

The time is NOW to start considering how you are tracking these new data points and concerns.  Work with forward-thinking vendors, like SNF Metrics to ensure you stay ahead of the curve.  We are operating in a new world where we are expected to be hypervigilant in tracking and trending in order to prevent the spread of illness in our buildings.