Long-Term Care Survey Alert

This three-pronged approach will keep the facility on its toes and in the know before, during and after an inspection.

Strategy No. 1: Realize that even a long-standing comfort zone with a familiar survey team can evaporate at any time. Some facilities go for years with a survey team with which they have a good relationship to the point that they get too comfortable with the survey process, says Cheryl Boldt, RN, a consultant with Maun Lemke in Omaha. Then they get a new survey team or a new survey team leader or a situation comes up so that everything changes. The facility team has to stay on top of things during the survey, she emphasizes.

Strategy No. 2: Make sure administrators and managers are involved with residents and observing care year round. Otherwise, "if, suddenly, managers show up on the floor and in residents' rooms during the survey, it's going to stick out like a sore thumb," Boldt cautions. Staff may even say to each other within earshot of surveyors, "You can tell it's a survey -- so and so is here."

Creative idea: Implement an "adopt a resident" program throughout the year where each manager gets to really know a group of residents and the residents' families, Boldt suggests. The manager regularly drops in on the residents to identify any unmet needs or problems.

Strategy No. 3: Create a sense of ownership among staff for the overall survey outcome. If you don't, staff may engage in "finger pointing" where one department blames the other for F tags, Boldt says. Create a bonus or salary increase incentive where the entire staff wins or loses based on the survey outcome, she suggests.