Skilled Nursing Facilities (SNF)

​Consider CMS Five Star Rating system and how it ‘serves’ families.  Rant on.  No doubt you know someone who was baffled at how a terrible nursing home gets a 4 or 5 star rating from CMS’s Five Star Rating System, while a good one can appear to have a lower rating, applied from an inspection before management overhaul several years earlier.  Why, you ask? Indeed.  Others have asked as well – noting the obvious missing link, family satisfaction with the nursing home, including dealing with the staff. For starters. Retiring outdated information, next. 

For a Chief Medical Officer, what role does technology play? Recently there was an opportunity to query executives in senior care, including Dr. Arif Nazir, Chief Medical Officer, Signature HealthCARE, who was asked about the technology impact on long-term care jobs.   The insights quoted here could be generalized, not just to Skilled Nursing Facilities, but to all types of care delivery – and are particularly notable in the context of last week’s New York Times article: "How Tech Can Turn Doctors into Clerical Workers.” As Dr. Nazir notes, it’s not just doctors who can be frustrated by over-emphasis on technology. Here are the questions and few observations about the work and the workers:

Largest city in the US shows a path for an aging society.  New York has long been a host and leader in supporting older adults, from being a WHO Age Friendly City, to acknowledging the presence of Naturally Occurring Retirement Communities (NORCs) starting in 1994, to being the home of the first Virtual Senior Center (VSC). In addition, technology leadership initiatives have been offered via SelfHelp in Queens, and Senior Planet, a technology exploration center that offers tech training for adults 60+. So many people aging, many needing the skills to find and keep jobs. So they utilize services like OATS and Senior Planet, or senior centers, training in libraries, carrier stores and online sites like AARP TeK Academy.