5 Principles of Long Term Care Excellence

How do you achieve Excellence in the Long Term Care Industry? How do you provide a high level of care to patients? How do you deliver high levels of customer satisfaction to your patient's families? The answers to the above questions require that you follow a process.
I have found success and helped other facilities achieve success by following and focusing on 5 principles.
These 5 principles are each focused on achieving one overall objective...
Long Term Care Excellence.
These 5 principles are people, patients, families of patients, processes and facility.
They are listed in order of priority, focus and importance.
Principle #1 - You must find, get & keep excellent people (staff)...
this has to be the primary focus of your long term care facility, because without great people...
you will fail to provide great care.
Principle #2 - You must deliver excellent patient care by all standards...
your standards, the state standards, the federal standards and most importantly the patient's standards.
Principle #3 - You must exceed the patient's family expectations.
These expectations may be high and even at times feel unattainable.
In order for your long term care facility to be excellent you must, not only meet, but exceed the highest expectations from even the most demanding families.
Principle #4 - Your facility processes must be excellent and effective at: upholding the law, protecting your people, delivering care to your patients & exceeding the expectations of the families of patients.
Principle #5 - Your facility must strive to be accommodating and inviting to everyone, even those who don't have family at your facility.
Contrary to popular belief, books are judged by their cover and long term care facilities need to better design and layout their facilities to be best suited for visitors of all types.
How does your facility match up to these principles? Which ones are you good at? Which ones are you failing miserably at? As mentioned earlier, these are listed in order of importance.
So it is easy to decide where you should start.
My guess is that you need to start at the beginning with your people.
Most long term care facilities are terrible at finding great people and even worse at keeping them.
I always say that there are 2 types of long term care employees: those with more than ten years of experience and those with less than 2 years of experience.
What happens to those employees in the middle with 2-10 years of experience? The answer to that question may be the key to fully understanding and conquering Principle #1.