Why some nursing homes are better than others at protecting residents and staff from COVID-19

Posted on June 12, 2020June 12, 2020 by Joanna Sun

Life Care Center in Washington state was at the center of the U.S. outbreak back in early March.Photo/Ted S. Warren, CC BY

Anna Amirkhanyan, American University School of Public Affairs; Austin McCrea, American University, and Kenneth J Meier, American University

The coronavirus pandemic has posed a serious threat to the U.S. long-term care industry. A third of all deaths have been nursing home residents or workers – in some states it’s more than half.

Yet some long-term care facilities have managed to keep the virus at bay. For example, veterans’ homes in California have seen only a handful of cases among roughly 2,100 residents. And preliminary results of our research on COVID-19 cases and deaths in nursing homes also support the idea that some homes are doing better than others at protecting clients and staff from COVID-19.

Why might this be?

As scholars of public management, we have found that three factors likely play the biggest role in determining how well a nursing home responds to a disease outbreak: whether it operates for profit, the degree of government regulation and the quality of management.

Profit versus quality care

More than 15,000 nursing homes currently operate in the U.S. Most of them are for-profit facilities backed by private investors, but a small share are operated by nonprofits or government.

For-profit companies selling the same product or service typically perform optimally in what’s known as a perfect market in which there’s plenty of competition and consumers have comprehensive information. More importantly, consumers are able to act on the information.

The nursing home industry, however, is far from a perfect market. Residents – who require constant assistance due to serious physical and cognitive limitations – are often unable to differentiate between good and bad care, advocate for themselves or choose a better facility. Their care is often arranged and paid by others.

As a result, for-profit homes, which are motivated to keep costs low and profits high, tend to be understaffed and, on average, provide lower-quality care compared with public and nonprofit homes.

In contrast, nonprofit and public homes tend to put higher emphasis on patient-centered care and reinvest their profits into better physical spaces, equipment and responsiveness to clients’ needs.

The numbers back this up. Our ongoing research shows that government inspection of for-profit homes found nine violations in an average regulatory inspection cycle, compared with 6.4 at nonprofit homes and 6.8 at government homes. These trends have largely remained constant during the past two decades.

As we examine the data on COVID-19 cases in nursing homes reported by states in real time and link them to the federal data on regulatory violations, we are observing more COVID-19 cases per capita in for-profit than nonprofit or public homes. So far, we’ve looked at homes in Illinois, Nevada, Colorado, South Carolina, Oklahoma and Oregon.

While it is too early to draw firm conclusions, it appears likely that fewer regulatory violations will correlate with success in managing the outbreak.

Government regulation is critical

Federal and state government regulation aimed at protecting residents is another critical factor that influences nursing homes’ ability to combat infection.

All nursing homes that accept Medicare or Medicaid must comply with federal regulations, while states are able to set their own rules for all facilities in addition to the federal minimums. A closer look at the variation among states offers strong evidence that more stringent regulation leads to better care quality.

That is a key finding of our recent study on a voluntary federal program that provides biometric criminal background checks of front-line care workers such as nurses and health care aides. About half of U.S. states have signed on to the National Background Check Program. Nursing homes in those states have fewer deficiencies and higher 5-star ratings.

Staffing requirements in nursing homes are regulated too. We looked at the impact of having more high-skilled nurses on the quality of care in counties hit hard by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Facilities with a higher share of registered nurses on staff experienced little to no impact on residents’ health outcomes, such as mobility or personal hygiene, as well as on the number of regulatory violations, while most that witnessed significant evacuations saw a large increase in violations and deteriorating health.

The federal government sets a minimum requirement of one registered nurse on staff at least eight hours a day. States are allowed to set their own higher standards – yet even these are considered insufficient by experts.

One key problem is that many state regulations emphasize staffing levels, rather than staffing mix, which means there is little incentive for homes to hire more skilled and expensive personnel. While federal rules issued in 2016 would have strengthened staffing requirements, including one that required homes to have an infection specialist on staff, they have yet to take effect, and the Trump administration has taken steps to weaken them.

Better management

Our research also suggests that management plays a critical role in determining the level of care quality – and ultimately a facility’s ability to withstand COVID-19. Specifically, we have identified several key factors that make a meaningful difference and are certainly worth considering by those looking for a home for their loved one.

For example, nursing home administrators who are more innovative and constantly looking for new ideas tend to run better homes, keep costs lower and address organizational flaws. In addition, homes with managers who have been around for longer periods of time usually deliver better quality of care because this makes it easier to buffer external threats – such as a disease outbreak.

We’ve also found that homes that engage residents and their families and apply their feedback in decision-making boast higher ratings and fewer health violations.

Understanding the pitfalls

Billionaire investor and philanthropist Warren Buffet is credited with saying that it is only when the tide goes out that you discover who has been swimming naked.

COVID-19 seems to be having this kind of effect on nursing homes, exposing which ones were in a better position to handle a pandemic. And that’s why it’s essential for more states that are not publicly sharing their COVID-19 cases or deaths in nursing homes – such as Alaska, Hawaii and Idaho – to begin doing so.

This will allow more research to be done and ensure that the U.S. nursing home industry is adequately prepared for the next pandemic when it inevitably comes.

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Anna Amirkhanyan, Associate Professor of Public Administration and Policy, American University School of Public Affairs; Austin McCrea, Ph.D. Student, American University, and Kenneth J Meier, Distinguished Scholar in Residence Department of Public Administration and Policy, American University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Caregiving, Dementia

Apathy: The forgotten symptom of dementia

Posted on July 19, 2019November 1, 2019 by Joanna Sun

Press Release
July 2019| University of Exeter – Apathy: The forgotten symptom of dementia

Apathy is the most common neuropsychiatric symptom of dementia, with a bigger impact on function than memory loss – yet it is under-researched and often forgotten in care.

photo of elderly man sitting on wooden chair outside house — Photo by weedlyr on Pexels.com

A new study has found that apathy is present nearly half of all people with dementia, with researchers finding it is often distinct from depression.

Although common, apathy is often ignored as it is less disruptive in settings such as care homes than symptoms like aggression. Defined by a loss of interest and emotions, it is extremely distressing for families and it is linked with more severe dementia and worse clinical symptoms.

Now, research led by the University of Exeter and presented at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in LA has analysed 4,320 people with Alzheimer’s disease from 20 cohort studies, to look at the prevalence of apathy over time.

At the start of the study, 45% presented with apathy, and 20% had persistent apathy over time. Researchers found that a proportion had apathy without depression, which suggests that the symptom might have its own unique clinical and biological profile when compared to apathy with depression and depression only.

Miguel de Silva Vasconcelos, PhD student at the University of Exeter and King’s College London, said : “Apathy is an under-researched and often ignored symptom of dementia. It can be overlooked because people with apathy seem less disruptive and less engaging, but it has a huge impact on the quality of life of people living with dementia, and their families. Where people withdraw from activities, it can accelerate cognitive decline and we know that there are higher mortality rates in people with apathy. It’s now time this symptom was recognised and prioritised in research and understanding.”

Professor Clive Ballard, of the University of Exeter Medical School, said: “Apathy is the forgotten symptom of dementia, yet it can have devastating consequences. Our research shows just how common apathy is in people with dementia, and we now need to understand it better so we can find effective new treatments. Our WHELD study to improve care home staff training through personalised care and social interaction included an exercise programme that improved apathy, so we know we can make a difference. This is a real opportunity for interventions that could significantly benefit thousands of people with dementia.”

The presentation was entitled ‘The Course of Apathy in People with Dementia’.

Ageing & Culture, Caregiving, Dementia, Research & Best Practice

Our ailing aged care system shows you can’t skimp on nursing care

Posted on June 28, 2019June 28, 2019 by Joanna Sun

The royal commission has scrutinised aged care staffing.
From shutterstock.com

Apil Gurung, University of the Sunshine Coast and Samantha Edwards, University of the Sunshine Coast

Staff shortages and a lack of training have once again emerged as key issues underpinning the nation’s aged care crisis, as the aged care royal commission hears testimony in Perth.

Registered nurse Noleen Hausler shared the experience of her 98-year-old father, Clarence, who was force-fed, assaulted and had a serviette held over his nose by a carer who was later convicted of aggravated assault.

Aside from this criminal behaviour, Ms Hausler said the standards at her father’s aged care facility declined after a new operator reduced staffing levels and employed carers with little training. Call bells went unanswered, she said, and incontinence pads were rationed.

Ms Hausler has called for increased ratios of registered nurses in aged care facilities, and better training and registration for carers.

Under-staffing and inadequate training have long been problems in Australia’s aged care facilities, with aged care facilities employing fewer registered and enrolled nurses and more carers who have lower levels of training.

Who does what in aged care?

A registered nurse (RN) provides nursing leadership and clinical supervision in aged care facilities. They are skilled clinicians who can respond to medical emergencies and are qualified to carry out assessments.

Registered nurses undergo three years of undergraduate study at university and are registered with the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA) in order to practise in health care setting across Australia.

An enrolled nurse (EN) conducts observations and assessments, and collaborates with and seeks assistance from the registered nurse in charge. Enrolled nurses are registered with AHPRA and undergo an 18-month diploma of nursing at TAFE.

Finally, care workers form the bulk of the aged care workforce and perform tasks such as showering, dressing and feeding residents. Titles for carers vary and include assistant in nursing, personal care worker, personal care attendant, and aged care worker, to name a few.

Care workers are required to complete a certificate III-level course, which can take up to six or seven months, but don’t require registration.

Carers cost less than nurses

There is no clear legislation requiring a certain number of registered nurses, enrolled nurses and carers to be on duty at certain point in time. The Aged Care Act 1997 is open to interpretation, so aged care providers are largely free to set their own staffing levels.

As a result, in recent years aged care operators have recruited proportionally fewer registered and enrolled nurses and increasing numbers of unregulated carers.

Residents in aged care have complex needs, and those looking after them need to be equipped.
From shutterstock.com

The changing make up of the aged care workforce is mainly influenced by economic advantage: hiring carers is cheaper than hiring registered or enrolled nurses.

It can also be difficult to find enough nurses. Nurse retention in aged care has been a major challenge for the industry because aged care providers often pay lower wages than hospitals.

But nursing care is worth the investment

Research shows having a greater number of registered nurses increases patients’ well-being and safety. Better staffing levels allow nurses to spend more time caring for residents and reduces the likelihood that vital information is overlooked.

Adequately staffing aged care facilities has economic benefits by reducing staff turnover related to burnout and job dissatisfaction.

Employing skilled registered nurses in aged care facilities can also save the health system money by reducing the number of costly hospital admissions that arise because residents can’t be adequately cared for in their aged care facility.

Aged care residents often have mental health issues, face cognitive decline or dementia, take multiple medications each day, are physically frail, and often have multiple chronic conditions such as heart disease, diabetes, cancer, arthritis or asthma.

But it’s difficult to meet the needs of these patients with the current aged care staffing and skill levels.

More than 50% of the residents in a residential aged care facilities have some form of dementia, for example, yet more than 50% of aged care workers have no dementia training.

Substituting registered nurses with lesser skilled carers has meant tasks such as medication management have been assigned to carers in some aged care facilities, despite this being a high-risk task that requires a high level of skill and experience.

What are the solutions?

Carers currently make up around 70% of the aged care workforce. We need to reset aged care staffing levels and ensure we have the right skill sets, which industry bodies suggest is: 30% registered nurses, 20% enrolled nurses and 50% care workers.

It’s also time to professionalise caring roles with better regulation and the introduction of carer registration.

Registration would clarify carers’ roles and allow only the delegation of tasks which are deemed safe for carers to carry out within their scope of practice. It would also ensure minimum training standards are met and that quality and safety is maintained.

The aim is not to vilify carers, who are the backbone of our aged care system, but rather to highlight the need for the right level of training, education and support to strengthen the aged care workforce and complement the care provided by registered and enrolled nurses.

Finally, we also need to increase the number of registered and enrolled nurses in the aged care workforce with guided pathways to attract and retain nurses. Well-structured graduate nurse programs, for instance, can provide support and guidance to the graduates who are considering a career in aged care.

Apil Gurung, Lecturer, University of the Sunshine Coast and Samantha Edwards, Lecturer in Nursing, University of the Sunshine Coast

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Caregiving, International Policies, Research & Best Practice, The Built Environment

Empathy, a key ingredient in culture change

Posted on April 12, 2019November 1, 2019 by Joanna Sun

News Release
April 2019 | University of Pennsylvania – Empathy and cooperation go hand in hand

Taking a game theory approach to study cooperation, School of Arts and Sciences evolutionary biologists find that empathy can help cooperative behavior ‘win out’ over selfishness.

It’s a big part of what makes us human: we cooperate. But humans aren’t saints. Most of us are more likely to help someone we consider good than someone we consider a jerk.

Two figures have heated discussion as a third in the middle observes — Taking the perspective of another can help foster cooperation in a group, according to a new study by Penn evolutionary biologists.

How we form these moral assessments of others has a lot to do with cultural and social norms, as well as our capacity for empathy, the extent to which we can take on the perspective of another person.

In a new analysis, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania investigate cooperation with an evolutionary approach. Using game-theory-driven models, they show that a capacity for empathy fosters cooperation, according to senior author Joshua Plotkin, an evolutionary biologist. The models also show that the extent to which empathy promotes cooperation depends on a given society’s system for moral evaluation.

“Having not just the capacity but the willingness to take into account someone else’s perspective when forming moral judgments tends to promote cooperation,” says Plotkin.

What’s more, the group’s analysis points to a heartening conclusion. All else being equal, empathy tends to spread throughout a population under most scenarios.

“We asked, ‘can empathy evolve?’” explains Arunas Radzvilavicius, the study’s lead author and a postdoctoral researcher who works with Plotkin. “What if individuals start copying the empathetic way of observing each other’s interactions? And we saw that empathy soared through the population.”

Plotkin and Radzvilavicius coauthored the study, published today in eLife, with Alexander Stewart, an assistant professor at the University of Houston.

Plenty of scientists have probed the question of why individuals cooperate through indirect reciprocity, a scenario in which one person helps another not because of a direct quid pro quo but because they know that person to be “good.” But the Penn group gave the study a nuance that others had not explored. Whereas other studies have assumed that reputations are universally known, Plotkin, Radzvilavicius, and Stewart realized this did not realistically describe human society, where individuals may differ in their opinion of others’ reputations.

“In large, modern societies, people disagree a lot about each other’s moral reputations,” Plotkin says.

The researchers incorporated this variation in opinions into their models, which imagine someone choosing either to donate or not to donate to a second person based on that individual’s reputation. The researchers found that cooperation was less likely to be sustained when people disagree about each other’s reputations.

That’s when they decided to incorporate empathy, or theory of mind, which, in the context of the study, entails the ability to understand the perspective of another person.

Doing so allowed cooperation to win out over more selfish strategies.

“It makes a lot of sense,” Plotkin says. “If I don’t account for your point of view, there will be many occasions when I judge you harshly when I really shouldn’t because, from your perspective, you were doing the right thing.”

To further explore the impact of empathy on cooperation, the researchers looked at a variety of frameworks, or social norms, that people might use to assign a reputation to another person based on their behavior. For example, most frameworks label someone “good” if they reward a fellow “good” individual, but social norms differ in how they judge interactions with a person deemed bad. While the “stern judging” norm labels “good” anyone who punishes a bad actor, the “simple standing” norm does not require this punitive approach: A “good” person can reward a bad one.

Plotkin, Radzvilavicius, and Stewart discovered again that capacity for empathy mattered. When populations were empathetic, stern judging was the best at promoting cooperation. But when a group was less willing to take on the perspective of another, other norms maximized rates of cooperation.

This result prompted the team to ask another evolutionary question—whether empathy itself can evolve and become stable in a population. And under most scenarios, the answer was yes.

“Starting with a population where no one is empathetic, with people judging each other based on their own perspective, we saw that eventually individuals will copy the behavior of those who judge empathetically,” says Plotkin. “Empathy will spread, and cooperation can emerge.”

This was the case even when the researchers accounted for a degree of errors, noise, and misperception in their models.

The findings open up a new area of research for both evolutionary theory and empirical studies into how societies behave.

“Empathy is completely foreign to game theory,” Radzvilavicius say. “In a way this is finding a new niche for research to progress to in the future, accounting for theory of mind.”

Looking ahead, the Penn team hopes to pursue such questions, perhaps by pitting different social norms against one another and eventually by testing their ideas against observations from real people, either through experiments they design or through data collected from social media.

“It’s obvious that in social media people are acutely aware of their public persona and reputation and curate it carefully,” Plotkin says. “It would be fascinating to analyze these evolutionary dynamics as they play out in online interactions.”

The study was supported by the David and Lucile Packard Foundationand the U.S. Army Research Office (Grant W911NF-12-R-0012-04).

Joshua B. Plotkin is a professor in the Department of Biology in the University of Pennsylvania School of Arts and Sciences. He has secondary appointments in the Department of Mathematics and the School of Engineering and Applied Science’s Department of Computer and Information Science.

Arunas L. Radzvilavicius is a postdoctoral researcher in Penn’s Department of Biology.

Alexander J. Stewart is an assistant professor at the University of Houston and a former postdoctoral researcher at Penn.

Caregiving, Dementia, Inspirational quotes & videos, International Campaigns, International Policies, Research & Best Practice, Therapeutic Activities

Personhood

Posted on March 21, 2019November 1, 2019 by Joanna Sun

Reading up on all the news, reports and discussions on the aged care royal commission, it makes me wonder if personhood is forgotten in dementia care. Recognition, respect and trust is not rocket science and that’s just common sense. What’s happened to aged care? Why is it that people living with dementia are now being objectified, disrespected and feared in aged care. How did we go so wrong?

Caregiving, Dementia, Research & Best Practice, Therapeutic Activities

Chemical restraint has no place in aged care, but poorly designed reforms can easily go wrong

Posted on March 6, 2019November 1, 2019 by Joanna Sun

Chemical restraint occurs more often than we think in Australia’s aged care system.
From shutterstock.com

Juanita Westbury, University of Tasmania

Last month the aged care minister Ken Wyatt announced he would introduce regulations to address the use of “chemical restraint” in residential aged care – a practice where residents are given psychotropic drugs which affect their mental state in order to “control” their behaviour.

Psychotropic medications used as “chemical restraints” are antipsychotics, antidepressants, anti-epileptics and benzodiazepines (tranquilisers).

Wyatt followed this announcement this month with a A$4.2 million funding pledge to better monitor care in nursing homes through mandatory “quality indicators”, and including one covering medication management.

Of course, you would be hard pressed to find a staff member admitting to controlling a resident by giving them a tablet. Instead, most staff would stress that medication was given to calm or comfort them.

But our research shows psychotropic use is rife in Australia’s aged care system.

Reforms are desperately needed, but we need to develop the right approach and learn from countries that have tried to regulate this area – most notably the United States and Canada.

What’s the problem with antipsychotic drugs?

Antipsychotic drugs such as risperidone and quetiapine are often used to manage behavioural symptoms of dementia.

But large reviews conclude they don’t work very well. They decrease agitated behaviour in only one in five people with dementia. And there is no evidence they work for other symptoms such as calling out and wandering.

Due to their limited effect – and side effects, including death, stroke and pneumonia – guidelines stress that antipsychotics should only be given to people with dementia when there is severe agitation or aggression associated with a risk of harm, delusions, hallucinations, or pre-existing mental illness.

The guidelines also state antipsychotics should only be given when non-drug strategies such as personalised activities have failed, at the lowest effective dose, and for the shortest period required.

The high rates of antipsychotic use in Australian aged care homes indicates the guidelines aren’t being followed.

In our study of more than 12,000 residents across 150 homes, we found 22% were taking antipsychotics every day. More than one in ten were were charted for these drugs on an “as required” basis.

We also found large variations in use between nursing homes, ranging from 7% to 44% of residents. How can some homes operate with such low rates, whereas others have almost half their residents taking antipsychotic medications?

Regulations to reduce chemical restraint

Of all countries, the US has made the most effort to address high rates of antipsychotic use.

After reports in the 1980s highlighting poor nursing home care, Congress passed the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act which sets national minimum standards of care, guidelines to assist homes to follow the law, and surveyors to enforce it.

For residents with dementia and behavioural symptoms, the regulations require documentation of the behaviour, a trial of non-drug strategies such as activity programs, and dose reductions after six months.

Prescribing practices vary widely between institutions.
From shutterstock.com

Homes that don’t meet these regulations are subject to a series of sanctions, ranging from financial penalties to closure.

The regulations were initially associated with substantial declines in antipsychotic use. By 1995 only 16% of residents were taking them.

But average rates of use rose to 26% by 2010. And in 2011, a Senate hearing found 83% of claims for antipsychotics in nursing homes were prescribed for unlicensed use.

This led advocates to conclude the regulations and surveyor guidance were ineffective.

Quality indicators to reduce chemical restraint

Another way to reduce antipsychotic use in aged care homes is by mandatory quality indicators, along with public reporting. The US introduced this in 2012. A similar system was instituted in Ontario, Canada, in 2015.

Measures are essential for quality improvement. But they can also lead to unintended consequences and cheating.

In the US, antipsychotic rates for people with dementia has allegedly reduced by 27% since the start of their quality indicator program.

But those diagnosed with schizophrenia were exempt from reporting. Then the percentage of residents listed as having schizophrenia doubled from 5% to nearly 10% of residents within the first few years of the initiative. So 20% of the reduction was probably due to intentional mis-diagnosis rather than an actual decrease in antipsychotic use.

A recent US study has also shown that the use of alternative sedating medications not subject to reporting, specifically anti-epileptic drugs, has risen substantially as antipsychotic use declined, indicating widespread substitution.

In Ontario, the use of trazadone, a sedating antidepressant, has also markedly increased since its antipsychotic reporting program began.

Reporting issues

In the US, nursing homes self-report indicators. A recent study compared nursing home data with actual prescribing claims, concluding that homes under-reported their antipsychotic prescribing, on average, by 1 percentage point.

Public reporting is often also time-consuming, with some researchers arguing that time spent managing quality indicators may be better spent providing care for residents.

Where to now?

Awareness of a problem is the first step to addressing it, and chemical restraint is a key issue coming to light in the aged care royal commission.

The proposed regulations and new quality indicator will allow homes and regulators to monitor the use of chemical restraint, but more importantly, should be used to assess the impact of training and other strategies to ensure appropriate use of psychotropic medications.

But to meet their full potential, these programs need to be carefully designed and evaluated to ensure that cheating, under-reporting and substitution does not occur like it did in North America.

Juanita Westbury, Senior Lecturer in Dementia Care, University of Tasmania

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Profit versus quality care

Government regulation is critical

Better management

Understanding the pitfalls

Press Release July 2019| University of Exeter – Apathy: The forgotten symptom of dementia

Apathy is the most common neuropsychiatric symptom of dementia, with a bigger impact on function than memory loss – yet it is under-researched and often forgotten in care.

Who does what in aged care?

Carers cost less than nurses

But nursing care is worth the investment

What are the solutions?

What’s the problem with antipsychotic drugs?

Regulations to reduce chemical restraint

Quality indicators to reduce chemical restraint

Reporting issues

Where to now?

Press Release
July 2019| University of Exeter – Apathy: The forgotten symptom of dementia