For Nursing Homes

The Advancing Excellence in America’s Nursing Homes Campaign is the first voluntary, national effort to help nursing homes measurably to improve care. The Campaign was launched in the fall, 2006, supported by all three provider associations, NCCNHR, CMS (both the Survey and Certification and the Quality Improvement Organization Offices), along with a broad spectrum of professional and other stakeholder groups. The purpose of the Campaign was to help nursing homes improve clinical outcomes, enhance quality of life for residents, and lead to a stronger, happier and more stable work force. A well designed website with a rich array of goal related resources ensured that every nursing home could have easy access to free, evidence-based practical materials to help with their quality improvement activities.

The Campaign also helped establish a coalition of nursing home stakeholders within every state, also called LANEs (Local Area Networks for Excellence), whose purpose is to provide leadership and guidance for the Campaign at the local level. Each LANE has a convener who is available to talk with you about the Campaign. The LANE convener for each state can be found on the Campaign’s website.

The Campaign Steering Committee selected a total of eight goals, 4 clinical and 4 organizational. Technical assistance materials and other resources to help nursing achieve results on the goals were posted on the website. Webinars were held on each goal and made available to nursing homes

Participation in the Campaign has made a difference in quality:

• By 2009, with two full years of data available, Campaign participants selecting a goal such as reducing pressure ulcers among high risk residents improved faster than nursing homes that did not participate or Campaign participants that did not select that goal.
• Almost half of all nursing homes in the nation participated in the Phase 1 Campaign.
• The Campaign met two of its goals. Nationally, the use of daily restraints was reduced to 5%, with 30% of nursing homes at  0% and another quarter below 3% and symptoms of pain in the long-stay resident were reduced were reduced to 5%.

As a result of the success of Phase I, the Campaign will continue its quality improvement efforts. – On October 22, 2009, a new phase of the campaign was launched that features an improved website, and new and revised goals that include staff satisfaction and advance care planning.

Participating in the Campaign has tangible benefits:

• Improvements in staff retention and maintaining staff stability saves money, improves efficiency and contributes to better relationships between residents and their caregivers.
• Providing measurably better care actually costs less. For example it can cost as much as $19,000 to treat a single stage 4 pressure ulcer.
• Happier, more satisfied residents will recommend your nursing home to others.
• In states considering Pay-for-Performance reimbursement methodologies, homes in the campaign are way ahead of the game.

Some nursing homes have said they are already doing quality improvement or are involved in other quality initiatives, such as Quality First and hence have no need to join Advancing Excellence Campaign. Actually the Campaign not only is complementary to your efforts it enhances their effectiveness since it provides state of the art training materials, helps you get to some of the root causes of problems and, with a minimal amount of data entry, gives you graphs with which to track your progress. CMS will be describing Advancing Excellence on its NH Compare website in order to make consumers aware of the campaign. Joining the Campaign and being a part of a national effort that is focused on the sharing of best

To learn more about the Campaign, click here.

For more information on why to join, please click here.

To join the Campaign, click here.

To view available resources, click here.