Foundation for Long Term Care, Inc.

Under the alternative care process of Exceptional Care Planning (ECP), nursing homes develop common standards of care for conditions commonly experienced by nursing home residents.

Under an earlier pilot phase in nine nursing homes, the Foundation for Long Term Care (FLTC) conducted initial training for nursing home staff and assigned facility coaches who provided ongoing assistance to reinforce the elements of ECP and to help nursing home staff work through challenges they encountered while implementing ECP. An external evaluation of ECP confirmed that the alternative care planning process reduces nurse time spent on repetitive care planning, yields more individualized care plans unique to each resident, and improves patient outcomes. Under this project, FLTC extended ECP training to 100 nursing homes over the course of one year.

Specific project activities performed by FLTC included: 1) conducting four regional trainings that will educate two staff from each of the 100 nursing homes on the elements of ECP; 2) conducting four group teleconferences that provide additional support and training on implementation strategies and managing resistance to change; and 3) evaluating the project through identifying the number of nursing homes that were trained, the number that implemented ECP, and to what extent.