The Moving Forward Nursing Home Quality Coalition on Tuesday announced the release of its final nine actions plans for improving nursing home quality over the next year.
The recommendations come from 120 individuals and organizations across the country focused on nursing home reform. As part of its work, the coalition formed resident focus groups and also spoke with managers, direct caregivers and others at facilities.
“These plans are long overdue — they are actionable and absolutely imperative declarations of what must happen to ensure quality and safety in the care of people in nursing homes,” Terry Fulmer, PhD, RN, FAAN, president of the John A. Hartford Foundation, which funds the effort, said in a statement. “We need the nation to coalesce around these action plans and help make them a reality. Everyone should see themselves as a vital part of the solution to improve our country’s nursing homes.”
Each plan outlines specific goals, steps to achieve them and the partners and infrastructure required along the way.
The coalition recommends:
- Addressing residents’ goals, preferences and priorities.
- Strengthening resident councils.
- Improving certified nursing assistant wages and support.
- Expanding CNA career pathways.
- Enhancing surveyor training on person-centered care.
- Designing a targeted nursing home recertification survey.
- Increasing transparency and accountability of ownership data.
- Developing a nursing home health information technology readiness guide.
- Financing new nursing home models that are smaller with private rooms.
Washington, DC-based Moving Forward was formed in mid-2022 in response to the April 2022 nursing home quality report from the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine. The coalition also draws on leadership from LeadingAge, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, and other national organizations and advisers.
“Our vision is that every nursing home is a community in which lives are nurtured, residents are empowered, and where people want to work,” Alice Bonner, coalition chairwoman, previously told McKnight’s Long-Term Care News. “It might be that some of the action plans are going to take longer to get all the way to outcomes, and for some of them, we might be able to do more in the short-term.”
Over the next few months, Moving Forward will host “coalition conversations” detailing specifics about each action plan and ways for interested people and organizations to get involved and advance progress. A full list of conversations is available here.
