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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Shirley Freyer
Concordia Lutheran Ministries
Tel: 1-724-352-1571 x8266
sfreyer@concordialm.org

The Challenge of Defining Quality Care at Concordia Lutheran Ministries

Cabot, PA – As Medicare transitioned into an easily recognizable star-rating system for individuals searching for skilled nursing care, added scrutiny has been placed on the measures and indicators that define quality care – such as residents’ health, mental status, and pain management.

And while these indicators are moving Medicare’s definition of quality care in the right direction, there is still some room for improvement and clarification, which, according to Concordia Lutheran Ministries Vice President of Skilled Nursing and Rehab Charlene Kline, is the principle complaint of many facilities who scored lower than expected once the rating system emerged.

The problem is that “quality” is subjective, regardless of any indicators. A facility with emphasis on short-term rehab and quicker resident turnover, for example, may reflect higher reported levels of pain, since many residents were admitted shortly after an elective surgery. A long-term facility, on the other hand, may report higher levels of incontinence, since there is a much higher percentage of residents with an advanced age. Both of these situations would reflect lower overall quality statistics according to Medicare’s standards. 

With that in mind, at Concordia the definition of quality care relates to the organization’s faith-based mission. Two key elements of the Concordia mission are providing high quality care and doing so in a Christian environment, and those elements are what guide everyday practices.

“When you’re treating people the way you want to be treated, or better yet how you would want your parents or grandparents to be treated, giving the highest quality of care is much less of a challenge,” Kline said. “And that concept is communicated from the onset at Concordia”

The notion that each patient/resident is treated as an individual defines quality care at Concordia. According to Kline, as long as the focus is continually placed on raising the bar in terms of healing, comfort, and attention to detail, the statistics eventually take care of themselves.

She also said there are a number of indicators Concordia uses to gauge its quality standards internally, including consistently exemplary patient/resident satisfaction surveys, occupancy statistics that often show a waiting list, a large volume of patient-to-patient referrals, and zero complaint visits from the PA Department of Health in the last seven years.

Two other indicators of the excellent quality at Concordia are a low staff turnover rate (less than 15 percent annually) and a new concept that is becoming more and more prevalent in the skilled nursing sector of Concordia: dozens of patients every month reserving rooms for their upcoming post-surgical rehab needs.

“While it’s great to currently have the five star Medicare rating at Concordia, we will always define quality by the happiness of our residents and the extent to which we are carrying out our mission,” Kline said. “We treat people as individuals, and that goes a long way in terms of quality care.”