Providing quality care at a long-term care facility is already stressful enough without adding in the concerns of what an upcoming state audit might uncover. The solution is to have a successful monitoring program in place to watch for and rectify anything these audits might catch.
Long-term care facilities have a wide range of obligations that audits will track, ranging from privacy regulations to quality of treatment. You know what they’re looking for, so that shouldn’t be causing the stress. It’s making sure you’re actually doing what’s necessary to pass the audit that’s likely keeping you up at night. Here are ways to reduce that stress.
Take a Risk-Based Approach
Assess your facility as if you didn’t work there. Most long-term care facilities take a robust approach to audit financial return on investment. That’s obviously important for the continuing operation of your facility—but healthy profit margins won’t overcome risks identified by an audit. Those might shut you down.
You already know what the auditors are looking for. Which areas open you to the most possible risk? Quality of care is relatively easy to self-monitor. You see that daily as you make your way through the facility. The same could be said for care planning and medication management.
But how about billing and cost reporting? Do your patient record creation and retention practices meet state and federal compliance laws?
Determine which areas expose your facility to the greatest risk of failing an audit. You obviously won’t take your eye off areas where you’re doing well—but stress is often caused more by what you don’t know. You may not like what your self-auditing efforts currently tell you. It’s better for you to uncover this bad news than discover it during an audit.
Create an Effective Monitoring Program
Your car stays on the road because your hands are constantly on the steering wheel. Your long-term care facilities efforts to remain in compliance with state and federal policies in order to pass audits need that same firm grip.
Perhaps the most crucial and effective way to implement a deeper level of monitoring is to step up your educational processes. Your staff is already highly trained in their respective fields. However, are they also aware of what auditors will look for?
The careful blending of your facility’s internal best practices with audit criteria results in a roadmap that generates quality care, professional standards, and a passing score for your next audit. It’s not easy to stay compliant, but it’s easy to—and far less stressful—to identify your obstacles and get them out of the way than to be surprised by them during an audit.
Technology that makes things easier for medical professionals and their staffs is the guiding principle behind the products Vitacon distributes. The vein finding technology used by the IV-eye portable handheld vein finder is a proud example. Use this link to have a distributor contact you.
Long-term care facilities have a wide range of obligations that audits will track, ranging from privacy regulations to quality of treatment. You know what they’re looking for, so that shouldn’t be causing the stress. It’s making sure you’re actually doing what’s necessary to pass the audit that’s likely keeping you up at night. Here are ways to reduce that stress.
Take a Risk-Based Approach
Assess your facility as if you didn’t work there. Most long-term care facilities take a robust approach to audit financial return on investment. That’s obviously important for the continuing operation of your facility—but healthy profit margins won’t overcome risks identified by an audit. Those might shut you down.
You already know what the auditors are looking for. Which areas open you to the most possible risk? Quality of care is relatively easy to self-monitor. You see that daily as you make your way through the facility. The same could be said for care planning and medication management.
But how about billing and cost reporting? Do your patient record creation and retention practices meet state and federal compliance laws?
Determine which areas expose your facility to the greatest risk of failing an audit. You obviously won’t take your eye off areas where you’re doing well—but stress is often caused more by what you don’t know. You may not like what your self-auditing efforts currently tell you. It’s better for you to uncover this bad news than discover it during an audit.
Create an Effective Monitoring Program
Your car stays on the road because your hands are constantly on the steering wheel. Your long-term care facilities efforts to remain in compliance with state and federal policies in order to pass audits need that same firm grip.
Perhaps the most crucial and effective way to implement a deeper level of monitoring is to step up your educational processes. Your staff is already highly trained in their respective fields. However, are they also aware of what auditors will look for?
The careful blending of your facility’s internal best practices with audit criteria results in a roadmap that generates quality care, professional standards, and a passing score for your next audit. It’s not easy to stay compliant, but it’s easy to—and far less stressful—to identify your obstacles and get them out of the way than to be surprised by them during an audit.
Technology that makes things easier for medical professionals and their staffs is the guiding principle behind the products Vitacon distributes. The vein finding technology used by the IV-eye portable handheld vein finder is a proud example. Use this link to have a distributor contact you.
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