A dashboard aimed at helping potential senior living and nursing home residents and their families, and others, better locate needed services is being viewed as a continuation of a pre-pandemic collaboration among Missouri state regulators and healthcare providers.
The Missouri Long-Term Care Ombudsman Program developed the dashboard to help consumers more easily locate long-term care facilities based on bed and service availability. Operators voluntarily contribute information.
The Long-Term Care Ombudsman Bed and Service Availability Dashboard provides voluntarily reported information from the state’s long-term care facilities on the number and type of beds or units available at a facility for memory care, private-pay, COVID isolation, behavioral health, Medicare and Medicaid. Users also can filter by services available, including bariatric services, dialysis, IV medications and substance use, among others.
“This resource will assist individuals looking for long-term care placement options specific to their needs in their desired area of the state,” Missouri Long-Term Care Ombudsman Program Director Jenny Hollandsworth said in a statement. “The more long-term care facilities that participate, the better the dashboard will be for everyone who uses it.”
To support hospital discharges during the COVID-19 pandemic, a successful pre-pandemic program in St. Louis was expanded statewide to efficiently address the needs of residents, hospitals and long-term care providers, LeadingAge Missouri CEO Bill Bates told McKnight’s Senior Living. Collaboration among state regulators and providers, he said, made the voluntary information-sharing program work.
“Making the dashboard of long-term care bed availability a permanent state program can only be viewed as positive for healthcare providers, which confront huge staffing and reimbursement challenges,” Bates said. “Matching residents to long-term care beds and freeing up hospital beds is a win-win-win.”
LeadingAge Missouri members are participating in the voluntary program, and Bates said he expects more to join.
All levels of facilities are encouraged to complete an electronic survey weekly to report how many beds they have available, and which resident needs they can serve. The survey and dashboard are located on the ombudsman’s website, along with instructional videos on how to use the dashboard.
As of Wednesday, information for 132 facilities was listed on the dashboard.
