I don’t know about you, but when I get into a car, I want to know who’s driving. After all, it’s the driver that determines where we go and how fast and safely we get there. Sure…the rest of us (the passengers) have something to say, but for the most part it’s just gab and conversation, “background noise.”
Managing the health of assisted living (AL) residents is sort of like driving a car. The AL is the car, and the residents’ chronic health conditions (CHCs) are the passengers. The most common CHCs are the drivers of the car – the ones that need the most attention and management (and who will get you into trouble if you ignore them!). The other CHCs in the AL are the passengers – the ones who are less common, generally more stable, easier to manage, and require less attention.
Being able to differentiate the drivers from the passengers in your AL car might help you with your health management. If you can accurately identify the most common CHCs (i.e. the drivers) in your AL (not by guessing or intuition), you can then focus your management most intensely on THEM in order to keep them as stable as possible. And this will help keep your residents out of the ER and the hospital.
ALs can seem like a random collection of a confusing multitude of chronic illnesses. And it might seem impossible or too time-consuming to sort through all the health data and try to make sense of it.
But there’s a way you can identify the drivers and separate them from the passengers. Analytics.
Analytics allows you to use your existing health data to measure and analyze your residents’ health. And this is surprisingly easy, inexpensive, and incredibly valuable.
Take care of the passengers in your AL, but ESPECIALLY take care of the drivers!
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