Turning nursing
homes into homes
This spring, 33 nursing homes in Rhode Island embarked on a three-year effort, led by Quality Partners of Rhode Island, to improve their quality of care by, among other things, implementing “culture change.”
The concept is simple – make nursing homes more like homes, and treat residents more like family members. That may mean making meal times and food choices less regimented, for example, or creating small communities within the institutions.
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Culture change has been shown to yield tangible business results, Quality Partners says, including lower staff turnover and higher satisfaction rates.
But most impressive are the health effects. At Elmhurst Extended Care, a 192-bed facility in Providence that implemented this approach more than three years ago, the death rate dropped by 40 percent and hospitalizations decreased by 38 percent.
We in Rhode Island are fortunate to have a number of experts and advocates on the subject of nursing home reform, starting with Quality Partners – a nationally recognized expert in the field – and Dr. David R. Gifford, the state’s health director. In addition, Richard Gamache, administrator of Elmhurst, is set to become president of the industry’s local trade group, the Rhode Island Health Care Association.
Not all nursing care is where it should be. But we are positioned to get the right care more quickly than most.
Corporate America
revisits citizenship
During the last three decades, shareholder rights has been front and center, while discussions about societal responsibility and business ethics have been a footnote – if that.
Public companies, the argument goes, exist to serve their shareholders, and they are under no obligation to serve any other constituency – whether it’s environmentalism or labor rights or community development. What a shareholder does with his return from the investment is his business, of course, and if he wants to invest in any of those “causes,” he is free to do so.
The times, as Bob Dylan would say, may be a changin’. Earlier this month, at a conference in New York City hosted by Reuters, The Conference Board and the Corporate Social Responsibility Initiative at Harvard University, corporate leaders made the case that “sustainable” business practices were no longer a luxury, but rather a long-term investment in the viability of the marketplace. Profits and the social good are not mutually exclusive, they insist, and in fact may be mutually dependent. Slowly, companies are coming to realize doing good may well be a necessary precursor to doing well.
