By Dave Ranney
KHI News Service
TOPEKA, July 26
The Kansas Foundation for Medical Care has been awarded a pair of grants aimed at helping four mid-size towns and nine nursing homes improve their care for the elderly.
The nursing homes will be selected by the Kansas Department on Aging. KFMC staff will pick the communities.
“We”re in the process of recruiting the communities,” said Connie Hubbell, a senior vice president at KFMC.
Each community, she said, will be expected to assemble a task force with representatives from the local hospital, physician offices, nursing homes, and home health agencies.
Each task force will identify and address local shortcomings.
“It”ll be different in each community,” Hubbell said. “It may be reducing pressure sores in one, better discharge planning in another.”
KFMC will provide “monthly on-site leadership” in each community for a year, she said.
“It”s just amazing what can happen when there”s someone who”s willing to coordinate the opportunity for all providers to meet and work together on an identified intervention,” she said.
KFMC will measure each community”s progress.
The nursing home grant, Hubbell said, likely will focus on ways to reduce staff turnover while promoting “culture change,” the notion of giving residents and their aides more say in the day-to-day decision making.
“Kansas is a leader in culture change,” said Hubbell, who served as Department on Aging secretary from 1999 to 2003. “Everything is team-oriented now, which is totally different from what it was five years ago when almost everything was top-down management.”
Both grants are state-funded and administered by the Department on Aging. The nursing home grant is for $152,000; the community collaboration grant for $204,000.
-Dave Ranney is a staff writer for KHI News Service, which specializes in coverage of health issues facing Kansans. He can be reached at
dranney@khi.org
or at 785-233-5443, ext. 128.