Elderly Care:
Are You Ready
For Value Based
Competition?
The management at nursing homes has the responsibility to improve true safety urgently.
How much room is there for mistakes?
Somewhere in Finland, year 2019: a 95 years old man pushes his wrist alarm in one of the leading nursing homes. There’s no response. His son happens to arrive just then by a chance. This time the situation is saved with no harm. But what if the son wouldn’t have arrived just then? When asked, the nurse in duty tells that she received no alarm. There was something wrong with the alarm system. Finally the alarm does start working, but it indicates a wrong room.
Non-existing incident reporting
Ok, mistakes happen and sometimes technology doesn’t work. However, in this case the worst part took place later on when the son asked to report this could-be-fatal malfunction. No instant reporting system was actually available. “After a workshift we tell what we have been doing in a reporting meeting” was the answer. Well, unfortunately this sounds like a weak system. The reality was confirmed by the manager: not all incidents are reported, she doesn’t receive that many reports.
Search for value and quality in nursing homes
Seniors living in nursery homes and their relatives are starting to wake up to this reality. Information is flowing directly to public, rather than to the management of these institutions. As a consequence of the situation, people are beginning to compare the value and quality of different homes. After all, you’ll want that your loved parent is at least safe if he or she must move in the nursing home.
The management at nursing homes has the responsibility to improve the situation urgently. But how can the management create true safety if it knows less about its’ own operations than the general public does?
Leader of a nursing home, is your unit ready for value based competition?
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The blog post is written by Mikko Määttä.
He is a Board Member at Megical Ltd producing easy-to-use digital safety and quality protocols to surgical processes and an Airline Captain at Finnair
