Why FACILITY HEALTH PROFILES are Important
When a family is shopping around for an Assisted Living Facility for their parent, they find there is almost no unbiased and objective way of determining whether a specific Facility is capable of managing their parent’s medical needs. These families have important questions, such as, “Are you capable of managing my mother’s pain medicines?” or “Can you safely manage my father with his heart condition?” or “My mother has severe arthritis – can you safely manage her with her mobility issues?” or “My mother takes a lot of medicines. Is your staff familiar with these medicines, and can they deliver them safely?”
Hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, and even home health agencies have metrics that allow comparisons of the healthcare they deliver, and these are easily found on the Medicare.gov website. Although Assisted Living Facilities manage a wide variety of chronic health conditions and deliver a broad array of prescribed medicines to their residents, they have no way of providing objective comparisons that allow them to demonstrate their expertise in health management. The only sources of information a Facility can provide to their prospective residents are opinions – opinions learned through word of mouth from friends and colleagues, advertising via the Internet and print media, and then touring each Facility. To be sure, these sources of information are important. Yet a missing link is the ability to make objective comparisons.
But now Assisted Living Facilities now have a new weapon in their marketing arsenal – HEALTH PROFILES by Illumination Analytics. These profiles showcase a Facility’s experience in managing a senior’s most common chronic health conditions and prescribed medicines. They provide objective documentation of all the essential health management occurring in their Facility. They open the opportunity for a Facility to discuss the services and programs they have developed specifically in response to the most common health issues experienced by their current residents. Families now have a way to compare Assisted Living Facilities and of choosing the one Facility that objectively demonstrates the most expertise in caring for the specific health interests of their parents.
Another metric is the Facility’s HEALTH BURDEN SCORE. This is a new metric that estimates the average health management burden of the residents in a Facility. The greater the Health Burden Score, the greater the overall complexity of the average resident’s health management. As a reference, the normal health burden score for a non-institutional senior is less than 15. Our early experience has shown average scores in Assisted Living Facilities range from 31 to 64.
Assisted Living Facilities will benefit from HEALTH PROFILES through enhanced health management and improved marketing. Those who embrace these profiles will be prepared for the near future when health analytics will be a prerequisite for referrals.
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