Skilled Nursing Facilities (SNF) hold weekly care interdisciplinary care meetings. We’ve found that by taking this concept one step further (to the bedside)….to involve patients and families, we’ve helped our patients meet their skilled care goals faster.
The Key is Weekly Bedside Conferences
The KEY to our success is a weekly bedside care conference that includes the interdisciplinary care team AND the most important team members, the patient and family. It’s where our care comes to life. This meeting leads to improved communication that ultimately leads to superior patient/family satisfaction and improved outcomes measures, including the following:
- Decreased Length of stay to less than 20 days
- Reduced hospital readmissions
- Reduced ED visits
- Improved patient/family satisfaction
The Components of Weekly Care Conferences
As an Administrator of a Skilled Nursing Facility specializing in short-term rehabilitation, our team has focused on optimizing the bedside care conferences. If you’re looking to improve Length of Stay, we recommend considering the following:
- Meet early in that patient’s stay. Day 2 is ideal because therapists have had an opportunity to evaluate the patient’s functional abilities and the patient and family have had some time to settle into a new environment.
- Dedicate a specific, consistent day and time and keep that time slot throughout the patient’s stay.
- Identify potential barriers to discharge by asking, “What are you most concerned about when you think about returning home?”
- Identify “Plan B and C” if a return to home is not possible or likely. Begin concurrently working on these plans in case they are needed.
- Include the family/support person in-person or via telephone or video conference and ask them for their valuable input
- Identify an estimated discharge date (as early as possible) and communicate it to the entire team, especially the patient and family.
Technology Making Weekly Bedside Conferences Easy
A list of ideal practices is helpful, however getting everyone to the meeting was a challenge. In November, 2019, my facility implemented a web-based Technology that I developed, called Skilled Day, to provide simple scheduling and family communication, thus removing daily inefficiencies. Before Skilled Day, it was very difficult to communicate this schedule reliably to family members and facility team members, resulting in poor attendance.
“This helps me feel more engaged with what’s happening in my Dad’s day. I wish I had this at his long-term facility because I live on the East Coast and sometimes it’s not apparent to me when therapies have been discontinued, for example.”
Weekly bedside conferences are now much more achievable. Multiple other facets of our services improved as a result, including Communication as a New Standard of Care. To find out more, watch the video below, and then schedule a demo with Skilled Day!
Jaclyn Hall is a Co-Founder of Skilled Day and the Administrator at the St. Luke’s Transitional Care Center in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. She has a Doctor of Physical Therapy from the University of Iowa, where she also received her Master of Business Administration. Jaclyn is a Certified Professional of Healthcare Quality through the National Association for Healthcare Quality.