Does your skilled nursing facility suffer from low census?
You may have stopped admitting patients with behavioral needs because you lack the resources to care for them and manage their medications. You may be used to the complaining from your attending physicians that you need to bring psychiatric professionals onto the team. They may even be telling you that they don’t feel comfortable prescribing psych meds. So unsurprisingly, it’s possible that your stock of antipsychotic medication is too high, and it’s putting you at risk of being flagged for medication misuse. Even if your facility hasn’t been flagged for that, you worry it could be.
Does any of this sound familiar? Don’t let low census prevent your facility from providing maximum care.
Forefront can provide the clinical and collaborative assistance you need.
Forefront’s clinical approach is collaborative with the whole Forefront Care Team at your facility. In most of our client facilities, we make recommendations on medications to the attending physicians and directors of nursing so that they have our specialists’ input on psych medications as a part of the whole pharmacological treatment regimen for each resident. When a conversation is necessary, our providers are ready to respond to questions and discuss options for the treatment plan, and they are ready to bring families into that conversation. Our entire focus is on improving and maintaining the patient’s highest quality of life.
How can Forefront help you maximize census 24/7/365?
ADMISSIONS
We make it possible for you to admit all patient-acuity levels. Let us drive up your census by opening your doors to patients with behavioral care needs. We permanently solve your professional staffing needs. With immediate access to care, no patient need goes unmet. We will round in your building weekly and respond daily if needed.
CARE
We provide a team of doctors and nurse practitioners to ensure that no matter how complicated the case, we will respond with expertise and coordinated care to monitor and maintain the highest quality of life for your residents and support your staff with the resources they need to manage these patients. Let us help titrate antipsychotic medications to get residents who should not be using these meds into other therapies, safely and over the correct time frame. We also staff clinical psychologists and LCSWs trained and experienced in geriatric psychotherapy for residents who can benefit from that level of care when you also don’t have those resources locally either.
BILLING
We bill insurers so you don’t have to and so you don’t have out-of-pocket expenses. This service is FREE for you. If you have a clinical need, Forefront can meet it at no cost.
TECHNOLOGY
We supply all the technology at no cost. All we need is internet access. We provide either wall mount units or portable tablets with one-click access to services. No tricky applications to learn. If you give us remote administrative access to your EMR, we’ll even retrieve patient records for our providers, so your staff just needs to identify patients, and we’ll take it from there.
QUALITY
We get you progress notes and patient care plan update recommendations within 24 hours of seeing each resident. Our clinical approach is collaborative, and in most cases, we are making recommendations to the care team about medications, GDRs, therapy options and even environmental and social strategies when it’s appropriate. If the attending physician wants our providers to directly handle all psych medications, we will also prescribe to your pharmacy. If your pharmacy service flags a patient for GDR, we will review the recommendation and agree or provide you with documentation to justify continuing psychotropic medications. Our providers are happy to speak with family members about the use of medications and the care regimen to maintain quality of life for their loved one.
COMMUNITY
Let us help keep the fabric of your community together. Let us help you so you can admit this vulnerable population. You don’t have to turn these families away and send their loved ones to a facility that’s far away because it’s the only one that has these resources available. We can bring the resources you need to you.
SAFE MEDICATION MANAGEMENT
With the recent emphasis on the misuse of antipsychotic medications, we have engaged our Care Teams in a carefully designed, gradual dose-reduction program to get alternative medications and treatment therapies in place to help staff safely manage medication regimens. And, we are mindful that many residents need to stay on these medications, which means documenting that need and managing the use and dosages of those medications to maintain the highest quality of life for those patients. Making sure that everyone is receiving the correct dosages and the lowest level of those meds is, perhaps, the most important reason to have professional psychiatric care for your residents. With Forefront, you can admit more patients with mental-health needs because you will have the qualified staff you need to treat them and because you will have the medications-management protocols you need in place to administer care with confidence.
Testimonial
“Being in a rural part of the state, we don’t have access to specialty physicians for mental health face-to-face right here in town. So, for us to have access for our residents via Forefront Telecare, we can offer psych services to our residents without even having to leave our facility. It cuts down on [staff and travel] expenses of having to transport residents to psych appointments outside our facility, and is much more convenient, particularly in bad weather.
– S. White, Social Service Designee
