Hazardous events that may force health care facilities to make decisions about evacuating or sheltering in place are becoming more common. These decisions are complicated, often made under stressful circumstances, and can have life or death consequences. Because internal or external situations may require either partial or total evacuation, healthcare organizations should assess their organization's risks, devise a comprehensive evacuation plan, and test the plan. The plan should incorporate strategies to conduct both planned and unscheduled evacuations. As organizations and professionals providing care for the frail elderly and persons with disabilities, nursing homes have a moral, legal, and professional responsibility to plan and prepare for emergency operations, including the decision to evacuate or shelter-in-place. Unfortunately, major disasters continue to occur such as the recent Hurricanes Ian and Nicole, yet they provide lessons learned and offer opportunities for facilities to learn how to better prepare for an evacuation. Evacuation of a nursing home is time-consuming, complex, and expensive and must be thoughtfully addressed in the facility's emergency preparedness and response plan, which includes discerned decision-making criteria to help make these decisions in a timely and effective manner, depending on the hazardous event faced. This presentation will discuss how aging services facilities can determine whether to evacuate or shelter in place, understand the different types of evacuations, and relevant guidance and regulations to consider.

• Enhance your organization's decision-making process when deciding when to shelter in place (SIP) or when the right time is to evacuate the residents and team.
• Compare different decision-making criteria to enable the provider to objectively measure increases in risk over time and guide response between stages of readiness for sheltering in place or evacuating.
• Recognize the purpose and activities of the after-action review to identify opportunities for improvement for the next emergency.

Activities programming can be found in almost any type of retirement community; however, wellness programming is typically only seen in assisted and independent living. As we see a rise in acuity in those moving into senior living communities, it is imperative that wellness is applicable across all care settings. This session focuses on the importance and value of bringing wellness to long-term care residents. Wellness is meant to enhance what is already being provided, prevent functional declines, and expand the breadth of how we can provide care for residents. The audience for this session includes, but is not limited to, Activities Directors, Wellness Staff, Administrators, Facility Owners, and Facility Specialists.

• Discuss ageism and its impact on programming across all care settings.
• Identify what wellness is in order to establish the framework to incorporate wellness components into activity programs across all care settings.
• Redefine the mindset on what wellness looks like, who the target demographic is, and why it's beneficial to provide these services to residents.
• Describe the value and purpose of wellness programming and how these services can enhance existing offerings, increase length of stay, and promote continuity of care.
• Discuss how to evaluate existing programs.

Value-based care makes the need for skilled nursing facilities (SNFs) to establish themselves as essential providers to their healthcare partners more critical than ever. With long-term success and financial viability of Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) and hospitals tied to the entire patient journey, including post-acute care (PAC) performance, acute-care entities seek out SNFs that provide better, more connected care with shorter length-of-stay and reduced rehospitalizations. What does this mean for SNFs, who are a major part of the care continuum but facing extraordinarily challenging times? To offset revenues lost by lower length-of-stay and inherently low census, high-performing SNFs take advantage of increased referrals, understanding the relationship between quality improvement and quantity. They are getting there with the help of live data. This session discusses how CareOne successfully implements the use of live post-acute data analytics to not only drive better patient outcomes facility-wide, but also strengthen relationships with partnering hospitals. Deborah Fein, BA, RN, RAC-CT, RAC-CTA (VP of Clinical Reimbursement, CareOne) will share data-driven tools and techniques used within their 37 SNFs that are proven to help:
oReduce Length-of-Stay
oReduce rehospitalizations
oRisk stratify/clinically prioritize patients
oExecute standardized clinical pathways

Joining Deborah is Margie Latrella, APN-C (VP Clinical and Network Quality, Real Time Medical Systems) who dives deeper into the "why" shared data is beneficial to both hospitals and SNFs. She uncovers which success metrics hospitals deem as vital when choosing preferred PAC providers. Together Deborah and Margie will explore how post-acute data transparency helps advance efficient and effective collaboration to provide the best possible quality-of-care.

With the help of live data, SNFs can experience the immense value that comes with enhanced care coordination - improved quality outcomes, increased referrals/census, and improved care transitions. By becoming strong partners for referrals, SNFs can improve patient outcomes and thus, increase revenue.

• List quality measures that drive hospital referrals.
• Utilize live patient-level data to establish and manage effective clinical pathways, improve Quality Measures, minimize risk, reduce hospital readmissions, and lower length of stay
• Recite proven strategies and techniques skilled nursing facilities implement to become part of a high-performing post-acute care (PAC) network.

This session focuses on understanding and examining the common assumptions about LGBTQ+ older adults of color, and learning why they may have different needs and relationships with their identity than other LGBTQ+ older adults. During the session, participants will explore the unique experiences of LGBTQ+ older adults of color and leave with best practices for working with them. Participants will be introduced to important figures in the LGBTQ+ People of Color community, including information and resources for further learning.

• Discuss an equity framework in care provision and current industry biases that affect LGBTQ+ older adults of color.
• Analyze the unique needs and experiences of LGBTQ+ elders including interventions and best practices to meet those needs.
• Identify important figures in LGBTQ+ history that impacted the lives of LGBTQ+ older adults of color.

There are 100s of quality measures used to profile providers but which one's matter most when it comes to attracting new patients from your referral partners? And how have the measures that matter changed in a world where referral partners are becoming increasingly PAC data savvy? Join our session as we review two perspectives on changes, we've seen in the last several years: Tom Martin, the Senior Director of PAC Analytics at CarePort Health, will review how referral trends have changed over the last 4 years from a dataset of over 1k hospitals and Dr. Calderon, the Chief Medical Officer at Atlantic Health System, will share his process for identifying high quality PAC partners and ensuring a data transparency that results in continuous quality improvement.

• Describe industry wide trends in acute referral patterns and what that means for skilled nursing facility operators.
• Identify the metrics that have grown in importance to your hospital referral partners.
• Describe the process in place for Atlantic Health System and how it has improved patient care.

Health Literacy is the ability to read, compute, understand and act on health information to make informed decisions. Health literacy affects people's ability to navigate the healthcare system, including filling out complex forms and locating providers and services; sharing personal information with providers; and engaging in self-care and chronic-disease management. Low health literacy is a serious threat to the well-being of persons seeking medical care. With the increasing diversity of clients, we may observe that our communication skills are less effective with people from backgrounds different from our own. Health information can overwhelm even persons with advanced literacy skills because medical science progresses rapidly. Moreover, health information provided in a stressful or unfamiliar situation is unlikely to be retained. Quite simply, the responsibility is ours as health professionals to facilitate health literacy through communication in plain language. Without clear communication, we cannot expect people to adopt the healthy behaviors and recommendations that we champion. The educational goal of this session is to offer participants easy-to-implement strategies for developing written/verbal patient education materials and assessment tools they can use to ensure clients understand the important health information we provide. The session will provide an overview of health literacy and review techniques for clear and effective communication, both verbal and written. It addresses communication with those from other cultures, writing/selecting easy-to-read health materials, and assessment tools to ensure clients understand the healthcare services provided and have the skills needed to access, understand, and use health information. Participants will learn best practice strategies for using interpreters and translation services including how to conduct a triadic interview. They will have the opportunity through case examples to evaluate sample educational materials for principles of literacy. They will also have the opportunity to administer 3 short health literacy assessments.

• Define health literacy including health literacy concepts and relevant statistics.
• Identify appropriate assessment tools to evaluate health literacy levels
• Discuss factors that influence health literacy utilizing techniques to facilitate health literacy in your practice.

The revised CMS surveyor guidance amplify the existing maze of notice requirements for discharges and transfers. Who gets a notice? When should it be delivered? Involuntary discharge situations affect skilled nursing facilities when residents, families and others are disruptive or abusive. Resident behavior and non-payment for a stay impacts the entire operations of post-acute care facilities and presents potentially dangerous and difficult environments for operators along with potentially significant economic considerations. CMS has announced a new initiative aimed at slowing the growing trend of illegal evictions of skilled nursing residents. Session will discuss key elements for discharges and transfers, as well as real-life strategies to improve your discharge and transfer practices.

• Identify the most common errors in the discharge process and how to avoid them.
• Describe the requirements for valid resident discharge.
• Identify legislative and regulatory trends related to discharges and the administrative process.

FY 24 MDS Changes do more than just change how you complete the MDS. The removal of MDS items, especially Section G, impact so much more that many may not be aware of. Section G and other sections leave gaps in needed data to calculate quality measures and perform case mix adjustments for QM's and staffing. Will the replacement items impact your QM's and Five Star Rating? What else will be impacted? This session will analyze the changes and illustrate possible changes SNF providers may see starting October 1 and beyond.

• Identify which of the Minimum Data Set (MDS) item changes have the greatest impact on your facility data.
• List 2 areas where providers may need an operational strategy to avoid problems.
• Discuss the CMS transition plan for the FY 24 changes and how providers can experience a smooth transition.

Designed for management and HR audiences.
While some of today's workforce is made up of deep-rooted, dependable staff, a larger number of positions are now a revolving door of employee turnover. Workforce thought leader, Shelonda Darling, will share insight on why staffing is so challenging today and additional ways to gain greater staffing stability. Learn how to slow the revolving door, more effectively manage the impending shorter-term workforce, and maximize the time you have with each employee.

• Describe current employee turnover trends and future staffing projections.
• Discuss reasons employees leave most organizations and how to utilize appropriate retention methods.
• Discover ways to become a M.A.G.N.E.T. employer who attracts better applicants and keeps staff longer.

As senior living continues to evolve, so does the technology needed to support and enhance the resident and employee experience. These gaps in technology have escalated the awareness for communities to have a proactive technology roadmap and budget. But where do we start? Now, more than ever, it is important to have a holistic strategic technology plan in place for senior living communities to succeed. In this session, learn how to build a customized technology assessment and roadmap for your community based on decades of experience and real-life learnings from senior living technology experts and communities like you. In addition, learn how to evaluate, plan, budget, and execute baseline and innovative technology needs at your communities.

• Identify innovative technology solutions for senior living communities.
• Determine the baseline technology infrastructure required to set your community up for innovative success.
• Build a proactive roadmap & budget using an internal steering committee for optimal buy-in, efficiency, and effectiveness.