Record-breaking attendance at annual risk management educational event
LIBERTYVILLE, IL, 5/13/2016 – Caring Communities annual Spring Education Series was held at 3 locations this year and boasted record-breaking attendance. Risk Managers, Directors of Nursing, and frontline staff attended this year’s Spring Education conference: Risk Management by Design, a systems-based risk and QAPI approach to falls management.
- Are we making use of the falls data that we have been collecting?
- What are the cohorts of falls in our organization?
- What can we do to use this data to improve fall rates?
Participants answered these questions and more at the 2016 Caring Communities Spring Education series. More than 270 risk managers and nursing professionals from across the country gathered for two days to hone their skills in interpreting data and using it to create real-world plans for bettering their communities.
Mimi McCahill, Vice President of Risk Management at Caring Communities, opened the event by examining the question Why Falls? Falls are the top cause of injury in Continuing Care Retirement Communities (CCRCs). Nationwide 1 out of 3 older people fall each year, but fewer than half tell their doctor – and 1 out of 5 of those falls cause a serious injury. Reducing falls, and the claims that can occur from them, is a major effort in risk management today.
Participants focused on taking the data collected via event reporting and using it to find trends as the first step towards developing a plan to reducing falls. During guided exercises, they searched for the very root cause behind events- learning to focus on the core issue(s), rather than continuing a cycle of chasing after surface level problems. With hands-on exercises, teams used realistic case studies to explore data sets and discover trends pointing towards the root causes of the events. This knowledge was then used to build performance improvement plans, complete with Plan-Do-Study -Act (“PDSA”) cycles. Interventions, measurement, monitoring and evaluation were stressed as steps towards quality improvement.
Feedback on the series has been enthusiastic and positive. Risk managers said they valued the focus on real world skills that they can apply at both the campus and corporate level. The hands-on exercises changed what to many had been purely academic to a new level of achievable and realistic, and are an illustration of the practical nature of the educational programs offered by Caring Communities. Jim Caldwell, Caring Communities CEO & President, said, “We’ve come far. The average attendance at each location this year was about one hundred… that’s a long way from the first Spring Ed., which was about 25 people gathered together in a small room by the airport.”
About Caring Communities
Caring Registered use this A.M. Best Rated A Excellent, Caring Communities, a Reciprocal Risk Retention Group is the leading member-owned provider of professional, general, and excess liability insurance protection, education, and risk management services for the country’s preeminent not-for-profit providers of senior care and housing. Membership in Caring Communities represents a long term strategic opportunity for mission based providers to work with the industry’s innovators and leaders – to further their mission in creating the safest environments and best risk management practices for their residents and employees. Caring Communities is owned and governed exclusively by its Members.
