TIER 1: Person-Centered Training
$150 million over three years for comprehensive person-centered training for direct care professionals and all other staff that builds over time—together with close ongoing data tracking, coaching, comprehensive collection of longitudinal quality of life metrics, staffing data and tracking of financial impact.
Joanne Rader of The EINSTEIN Option, Carmen Bowman Edu-Catering and Kim McRae of Culture Change Network of Georgia speak about Tier 1 of the EINSTEIN Option.
Ensuring equity would be foundational for Tier 1 applicants—meaning nursing homes in communities that are in geographic regions with high proportions of low to moderate-income older adults would be preferred. Funding would flow to nursing homes with the concurrence of states and CMS.
Outcomes tracking would focus on resident experience of care and quality of life metrics, together with professionalism and ethics, health and wellness, empowerment and advocacy, community inclusion and networking, cultural competency, self-development, leadership metrics, and interdisciplinary team-based self-assessments of progress.
Tier 1 applicants would be required to track and report on wage increases and benefits across all staff, and to develop plans for converting multi-occupancy rooms to single-occupancy rooms.
Note: A budget for this allows for enrollment of 40 participating groups – i.e., groups of homes electing to receive the free training and QI technical assistance (TA) to sustain person-centered/culture change practices in each of 10 CMS regions. Funding would be $5 million per region, or $50 million a year, totaling $150 million over 3 years. This would be sufficient for groups of nursing homes organized in each region to receive comprehensive culture change training, mentoring, and TA over 3 years.
