Madison, Wisconsin – Superior Health Quality Alliance (Superior Health) is joining a nationwide training program to help keep COVID-19 from spreading in area nursing homes and to prepare and equip staff so that they can better protect residents and themselves. This is an essential nationwide initiative in the fight against COVID-19.
The program is part of The National Nursing Home COVID-19 Action Network supported by the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) in collaboration with the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) and Project ECHO. Superior Health is participating in The Network as an official Training Center for nursing homes.
This program has six goals:
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- Keep the virus from entering nursing homes.
- Find out early if residents and staff have been infected.
- Prevent the spread of the virus to staff, residents, and visitors.
- Provide safe and appropriate care to residents with mild and asymptomatic cases.
- Ensure staff have the knowledge, skills, and confidence to implement best-practice safety measures to protect residents and themselves.
- Reduce social isolation for residents, families, and staff.
To do this, The Network embraces an “all teach, all learn” philosophy in which participants both receive education in best practices from renowned experts and learn from their peers. Superior Health will lead 16 virtual learning sessions with nursing home teams in simultaneous cohorts. Each Network session is designed to be interactive—to hear from nursing home staff about the challenges they are facing and provide practical solutions. During each session, nursing home staff will discuss real cases of front-line problems with both experts and their peers. In this way, staff have a chance to share best practices and learn from their peers while benefiting from the guidance of nursing home and quality improvement experts. Each session will include a brief lecture or lesson paired with case presentations and discussion, followed by a Q&A forum.
“Cases of COVID-19 continue to rise in our region,” shares Kelsey Ostergren, Program Manager, “Through participation in The AHRQ ECHO National Nursing Home COVID-19 Action Network, Superior Health is working to reduce cases, by providing training and support to nursing home staff on best practices for protecting patients, staff and visitors from deadly COVID-19 infection and spread.”
As a designated training center Superior Health will also provide rapid response mentorship for any nursing home that experiences a sudden increase in COVID-19.
Superior Health Quality Alliance is comprised of eight member organizations – all with long track records of success driving achievement of Medicare quality improvement goals. Member organizations include the Illinois Health and Hospital Association, MetaStar, Michiga
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s (AHRQ) mission is to produce evidence to make health care safer, higher quality, more accessible, equitable, and affordable, and to work within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and with other partners to make sure that the evidence is understood and used.
The Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) uses improvement science to advance and sustain better outcomes in health and healthcare across the world.
Project ECHO® (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes) is a movement to demonopolize knowledge and amplify the capacity to provide best practice care for underserved people all over the world.