Hospital admissions, hospital readmissions, the off-label use of antipsychotic medications, and occupancy rates are the four new assisted living measures that have been added to the National Center for Assisted Living’s online data collection tool LTC Trend Tracker, the organization announced Sunday at NCAL Day.

“We know our assisted living communities are providing high-quality care, but in today’s healthcare environment, we need to be able to demonstrate it,” NCAL Executive Director Scott Tittle said. “NCAL is proud to grow our assisted living footprint in LTC Trend Tracker to help providers better understand how they’re doing, share that with other healthcare partners and consumers and, hopefully, get recognized for their amazing work.”

The four additional measures bring the total to six for assisted living providers in LTC Trend Tracker. Reports currently exist regarding staffing (calculating turnover and retention) and customer satisfaction. Sunday’s announcement means that NCAL member organizations now have the ability to track their progress on all of the NCAL Quality Initiative goals within one tool.

“What sets LTC Trend Tracker apart from other data collection platforms is that our measures are clearly defined, so that everyone is comparing apples to apples,” said NCAL Senior Director of Workforce & Quality Improvement Programs Lindsay Schwartz, Ph.D. “This allows any assisted living organization to instantly see how they’re doing in relation to their peers in their state, region or the entire nation.”