Nursing Homes
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), has funded KFMC to address areas of patient care related to safety and quality since 2002. Beginning in August 2011, CMS updated this work to be bolder, even more patient/resident centered, crossing boundaries between different healthcare providers and expanding learning into network collaboratives for peer-to-peer sharing.
Improvement initiatives within nursing homes will begin with decreasing pressure ulcers and eliminating physical restraints. Over time improvement initiatives will shift to the collaborative approach and address decreasing healthcare acquired conditions such as catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTI) falls and to decrease the rates of staff turnover and improve the consistent assignment of caregivers to residents.
Kansas nursing homes that have worked with KFMC in the past have made significant improvement in reducing pressure ulcers and eliminating physical restraints. Kansas is currently third in the nation with physical restraint elimination and 14th in the nation with pressure ulcer reduction.