Post-Acute Healthcare
Environmental Services
People expect clean—from shiny floors and fresh-smelling air to readily available hand hygiene stations and effective, germ-killing disinfection. In today’s world, cleanliness is not negotiable. Partnering with MasVida Health Care Solutions means better outcomes. Not only can we reduce your overhead, eliminate variability, and improve quality, but we can save you time, effort, and precious resources to help you focus on what really matters—your patients, residents, and customers.
Recommended Best Practices and Solutions
Hand Hygiene
Put hand hygiene products in every resident room (ideally inside and outside of the room) and other resident care and common areas (outside dining hall, in therapy gym).
Use a complete hand hygiene program including a full line of effective hand hygiene products, dispensers, education, awareness, and behavioral modification tools, and training.
Make sure sinks are well-stocked with soap and paper towels for handwashing.
Consider designating staff to steward supplies and encourage appropriate use by residents, visitors and staff.
Hand Hygiene Assessment: Learn how you can reduce overhead, eliminate variability, improve quality, and positively impacts resident satisfaction using this free evaluation.
Safeguard your environment with a customized solution that produces better outcomes. Learn more here.
Recommended Best Practices and Solutions
Environmental Cleaning and Disinfection
Increase environmental cleaning
Clean and disinfect all frequently touched surfaces such as doorknobs/handles, elevator buttons, bathroom surfaces/fixtures, remote controls and wheelchairs.
Make sure EPA-registered hospital-grade disinfectants
These are available to allow for frequent disinfection of high-touch surfaces and shared resident care equipment. Properly clean, disinfect and limit sharing of medical equipment between residents and areas of the facility. Refer to List N on the EPA website for EPA-registered disinfectants that have qualified under EPA’s emerging viral pathogens program for use against COVID-19.
Environmental Cleaning Assessment
Assess your current program and learn how you can provide better care while decreasing costs. Learn more here.
What is Post-Acute Care?
Post-acute care is care that is provided to individuals who need additional help recuperating from an acute illness or serious medical procedure. The goal of post-acute rehabilitation is to maximize patient wellness and independence so they can get back to the business of living their best lives. Post-acute care services range from intensive short-term rehab to longer-term restorative care. Some patients will achieve full recovery, while others learn to manage the symptoms of a chronic illness.
Because of their congregate nature and residents served (older adults often with underlying medical conditions), nursing home populations are at the highest risk of serious illness caused by COVID-19 and other common organisms including MRSA, Streptococcus pneumoniae, Clostridium difficile, and the influenza virus. Every effort must be made to prevent the introduction and spread of disease within these facilities.
Residents of long-term care facilities (LTCFs) including nursing homes, skilled nursing facilities, and long-term acute care hospitals are more susceptible to infection and the detrimental impact of infections than the general population. In addition to the susceptibility of residents, a LTC environment presents challenges to infection control and the ability to contain an outbreak with potentially rapid spread among a highly vulnerable population.
What is a Nursing Facility?
A skilled nursing facility (SNF)
This is a special facility or part of a hospital that provides medically necessary professional services from nurses, physical and occupational therapists, speech pathologists and audiologists. Skilled nursing facilities provide round-the-clock assistance with healthcare and activities of daily living. Skilled nursing facilities are used for short-term rehabilitative stays after an individual is released from a hospital.
A Hospital-based SNF
This is in a hospital and provides skilled nursing care and rehabilitation services for people who have been discharged from that hospital but who are unable to return home right away.”1
With more than 1,200 free-standing nursing facilities in Texas alone, the typical nursing facility is not physically designed to effectively support social distancing measures, while at the same time housing numerous residents who might require quarantine measures including isolation. The limitations of the physical environment mean many of the protective measures required to limit potential exposure and spread must be accomplished by staff who are already working under extreme conditions.
Nursing facilities in more densely populated locations are likely to experience higher risk for exposure among staff and visitors. As a result, facilities in metropolitan and urban areas have a higher risk of infection and face more challenges controlling spread when there is infection. They are also more likely to face staffing shortages because of competitive job markets. Nursing facilities in more rural locations have less health care system support, might not have local health authorities, and have smaller staffing pools making it harder to cover shortages that result from suspected exposure. Facilities in rural areas might also be more challenged to find equipment necessary to care for COVID-19 positive residents.
Sources:
- 1 Texas Health and Human Services Commission Long-term Care Facilities (LTCFs): https://www.hhs.texas.gov/sites/default/files/documents/doing-business-with-hhs/provider-portal/long-term-care/nf/covid-response-nursing-facilities.pdf