Piñon

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE—October 8, 2009

October 4-7, 2009 - Three Piñon Homes traveled to Chicago to Receive National Quality Award
Piñon Management is pleased to have three winners for the 2009 American Health Care Association Step 1 Quality Award. Those winners are: Amberwood Court Care Center, Denver; Fairacres Manor, Greeley; and North Star Community, Denver. The winning nursing homes received their awards at this year’s AHCA Conference held in Chicago, October 4-7, 2009. The AHCA Quality Award is a distinction given to AHCA member organizations for applying and demonstrating the principles of continuous quality improvement. Applicants are evaluated based on criteria adapted from the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA) Health Care Criteria. These criteria provide a standard of quality for organizations seeking the highest levels of performance and competitiveness. In their totality, the criteria address all of the key requirements that long-term care organizations must address to achieve excellence.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE—March 13, 2009

Piñon Management’s Director of Reimbursement Retiring

John Brammeier, Chief Financial Officer at Piñon Management, has announced the retirement of Barbara Kilgallon, Piñon’s Director of Reimbursement, effective March 31, 2009.

Barbara joined Piñon in 2001 as a Finance Specialist. She was rapidly promoted to Accounting Manager and then to her current position. In addition to working with Piñon’s managed homes, Barbara has served as a special reimbursement consultant on Piñon’s multi–state consulting projects.

She is an expert on Medicaid and Medicare cost reporting and billing issues and has served as a technical expert for the Colorado Health Care Association in reviewing proposed rule changes. Her Medicare and Medicaid expertise is widely recognized in the long– term care community in Colorado. Barbara looks forward to more leisure time in her retirement, but does plan to do some math tutoring and learn to play the violin and will continue to provide some support to Piñon Management on a contract basis. We have great appreciation for Barbara’s incredible work at Piñon Management and in long–term care, and we wish her a wonderful new beginning.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE—February 24, 2009

Local Physician is Finalist for National Award: Medical Director of the Year

Karyn Leible, Chief Clinical Officer of Piñon Management is a nominee and finalist for the American Medical Directors Association’s (AMDA) 2009 Medical Director of the Year. Kelley Hamm, Director of Nursing of the Colorado State Veterans Home at Fitzsimons nominated Dr. Leible for this honor, which will be awarded during AMDA’s Annual Symposium in Charlotte, NC, this March. This annual award recognizes one individual whose vision, passion, leadership, knowledge and commitment succeed in taking patient care to high levels of quality, excellence and innovation. Dr. Leible has served as Medical Director at Fitzsimons since 2004 and was part of the successful facility turnaround effort led by Piñon Management.

“Each year the review committee is humbled by the dedication of real–life, in–the–trenches medical directors. We think that every applicant deserves an award,” says AMDA Executive Director Lorraine Tarnove. She adds, “The entire AMDA family celebrates these successes and the messages they send to all long–term care professionals in the field. We can provide good care and meet the needs of those patients who need our care and kindness. Congratulations to all, and thanks to those who nominated their physician leader.”

An interdisciplinary panel judges nominees on their contributions and accomplishments in long–term care medicine, specifically clinical expertise, staff education, leadership and community involvement. This year, the panel has 27 nominations from across the country and from both small facilities and large chains to review. Judges include David Brectelsbauer, MD, CMD, James Yates, MD, CMD, Mary Ousley RN, Joseph Gruber RPh, CGP, FASCP, Marianna Grachek MSN, CNHA, CALA, and Kenneth Brubaker, MD, DO. Brubaker, who was the 2008 Medical Director of the Year, appreciated the opportunity to participate in the selection of this year’s MDOY. “The written nominations were extraordinary. I was impressed with the number of very creative educational activities our Medical Directors are doing throughout AMDA,” he said. “Having the opportunity to read the nominations gave me many new ideas about how I can improve my medical directorship work.”

Not only will the 2009 Medical Director of the Year be honored during the AMDA Annual Symposium next month, but he or she also will be featured in articles in Caring for the Ages (www.caringfortheages.com) and along with the finalists, share best practices at an educational session at the 2010 Annual Symposium.

The American Medical Directors Association (AMDA) is the national professional association of medical directors, attending physicians and other professionals practicing long–term care medicine committed to the continuous improvement of patient care. The organization provides education, advocacy, information and professional development for medical directors and other practitioners from various disciplines working together to deliver quality long–term care.

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE—Released February 4, 2009

North Star Community Designated Special Provider by National MS Society

North Star Community has been designated a “Center for the Promotion of Excellence in Long Term Care” by the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. All nominees are reviewed and evaluated in terms of a number of areas including specialized programming, accreditation⁄licensure, expertise in MS, collaboration with the MS Society and commitment to MS care.

The review committee was unanimous in its appreciation and commendation for all that North Star Community does to better the lives of people with MS and their families.

North Star Community is now recognized as one of the unique specialized providers around the country taking on a leadership role in terms of programming, staffing, training, research and advocacy.

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FROM THE DESERET MORNING NEWS, Published January 19, 2008: Providers Putting ‘Home’ into Nursing Home

By Lois M. Collins

Utah’s long–term care providers are struggling with quality of life issues as they try to rethink how they care for residents. They are trying, quite simply, to put more “home” in “nursing home.”

It’s not a painless process, according to Jeff Jerebker, president and chief executive officer of Colorado–based Piñon Management, which operates 16 long term–care facilities. But it’s a rewarding one. And it’s the direction the industry must move if it is to survive the aging of baby boomers who see nursing homes as “the most dreaded alternative.”

Jerebker spoke Friday morning at the launch of We CARE—the Coalition for Advancing Resident–centered Environments. The reform effort includes care providers, government agencies, social workers, geriatricians, lawmakers and community groups. Nursing homes long have been based on a hospital–like, institutional model of care, he said, the schedule for meals and baths and events devised to meet staff needs. Residents do the adjusting.

The buildings tend to look like hospitals, not homes, with long corridors spiking out from a nursing station and shared bathrooms. The goal is to see how many residents can be “stuffed” in to maximize profits. Care quality has been judged on “efficiencies” tightly prescribed by the government, which pays through Medicaid and Medicare for the majority of care.

Those who grew up in the Depression accepted that. But with the emergence of more options for aging and an entirely different generation soon to cross the facility threshold, “the new generation utterly rejects this model,” he said.

"Sometimes change is good…in this case, change is the only way to go,” said Deb Burcombe of the Utah HealthCare Association. "“It’s not about making it homelike. These are their homes.”

Change starts with how a facility thinks about the services it provides and the population it serves, Jerebker said. Providing choice is essential. The goal of the reform is to get the decisionmaking “as close to the residents as possible.”

In one of the nursing homes Piñon runs in Colorado, the long corridors have been broken into neighborhoods, each with a distinctive flavor clear to the art on the walls. They have porch lights, not call lights, and “front doors” that you need to knock on, denoting that this is someone’s home. Meals might be served restaurant or buffet style, and residents choose when to eat. Some facilities offer five meal sittings, and residents can pick which fit their desires. There are neighborhood council meetings. Staffers are assigned permanently to a neighborhood, to foster more community. And speaking of communities, they’re getting out into them more—and inviting them inside the facilities, as well.

The silo–style management must flatten out to accomplish it, he said, so the resident or those closest to him have more say. Piñon looks for workers who serve the resident, not a workforce that serves a department supervisor.

But he warns that as the changes occur—a “gradual transformation and a tough transformation”—nursing home operators must be prepared to have deficiencies noted when they’re surveyed by government. Rules of inspection haven’t changed to keep up with the evolving face of the facilities, and focus is shifting in so many ways that “things fall through the cracks.” What emerges, though, is worth the extraordinary effort.

“We’re converting from institutions to habitats,” said Jerebker.

The benefits from increased resident satisfaction counter some of the growing pains. When his facilities targeted services to residents who are unhappy or act out, complaints decreased, and so did many of the behaviors. Their needs, it turned out, “were really not a big deal, but things that get overlooked.”

Changes that would seem to hurt the facility’s bottom line help it. Piñon took a 78–bed nursing home down to 64 rooms, putting more space into living, dining and common areas. Revenues went up, in part because they had a higher occupancy rate and less staff turnover.

“Home” is how Jeaniene Sanone, 62, a resident at Hillside Rehabilitation Center in Salt Lake City, describes where she lives. The staff is family. She can sleep in if she wants because meals aren’t served on a now–or–never schedule. And sometimes, she marvels, “they bring you the things you need before you know you want it! If I’m lucky, I’ll get to spend the rest of my life there.”