The Nursing Home Podcast

Learn more about Doctor G at AskDoctorG.com

 

Research shows that talking is crucial to brain development, mental health, and well-being.

Talking has been shown to feed and enhance the working, short term memory, which is the first type to decline in Seniors. Improvement of the working memory will, in turn, feed the long-term memory and overall health.

Phone buddies are trained, empathic, passionate volunteers of all ages who are connected to a senior to call once or twice a week for at least half an hour. 

It has also been shown that listening helps build empathy and talking helps to improve our mood so the benefits are reciprocal to both parties.

Friendly Voices also provides prepaid phones with unlimited minutes to all phone buddies who request them.

LEARN MORE ABOUT LAURA AND FRIENDLY VOICES!

• FriendlyVoices.org
• Linkedin

RELATED EPISODES

• Episode 55 - Fighting Loneliness With Laughter Yoga
• Episode 48 - The Loneliness Pandemic
• Episode 13 - Bringing the Caring Back to Healthcare with Dovid Weiss

Alok Mahadevia, who goes by Loki, discovered laughter yoga in 2012 after feeling extremely lonely upon moving to the United States from India. His subsequent experience led him to discover how beneficial this practice was for seniors, those coping with chronic problems or terminal illness, and anyone else simply feeling isolated.

Founded in the late 90’s by Madan Kataria, laughter yoga incorporates voluntary, group-based laughter, and ancient Pranayama breathing techniques. Studies have shown that laughter, both real and forced, has numerous physiological and psychological benefits including acting as a natural painkiller, boosting endorphin and serotonin levels, and decreasing cortisone (stress) levels.

Though one must laugh for an average of 10-15 minutes a day in order to feel these helpful effects, most adults hardly even brush that number.

Loki has led laughter workshops in a number of places including the corporate sector and senior care facilities but when COVID-19 struck he had to think up a new method for his practice. He launched Laugh With Loki through Zoom and his virtual laugh yoga sessions have been attended by more than 700 people from over 16 countries.

Loki hopes to start collaborating with nursing homes to bring his virtual workshops to residents who, with the difficulties of COVID-19, are more than in need of a good laugh.

FOLLOW LAUGH WITH LOKI!

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/laughwithloki/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/harshlokilaughs/

RELATED EPISODES:

• EPISODE 48: ¬†The Loneliness Pandamic
• EPISODE 24: Adult Care; Where Does it Fit Into the Continuum?

Susan Ryan, senior director of the Green House project, delves into the negative stigma that faces seniors. 

With 40+ years of experience in the senior care field, Ryan has witnessed first hand the problems of both nursing homes and home care.   

With decreased independence,  institutional living environments, coupled with a culture of ageist beliefs, elderly residents often feel disempowered and diminished. Those who partake in homecare may also become extremely isolated and lonely. 

The Green House Model designs nursing facilities to look and feel like real homes. These pods or units contain around 10-12 rooms each equipped with a private bathroom. 

A kitchen and courtyard provide residents with independence as they will be able to cook and venture outside should they choose to. Staff are dynamic and serve a variety of functions, thereby developing stronger relationships with residents. 

Susan explains that in order to make their innovative project work, the Green House team has to:

• Keep development costs down
• Consider the best routes to fund and finance
• Develop a balanced payer mix of Medicaid, Medicare, and private pay residents
• Combine staffing of the various departments.

These homes are flourishing amidst the crisis of COVID-19 as a result of their small size and restricted admission. 

LEARN MORE ABOUT THE GREENHOUSE PROJECT!

• The Elevate Eldercare Podcast
• www.TheGreenHouseProject.org¬†

RELATED EPISODES 

• EPISODE 13: Bringing the Caring Back to Healthcare¬†
• EPISODE 1: Here's Why I Started The Nursing Home Podcast
• EPISODE 28: First - Put Your Own Mask On

Freda Mowad is the CEO of Quality Rehab Management, QRM, and as a speech and language pathologist who has worked in the rehab industry for 20+ years,  has a lot of experience to bring to the table.

Despite its importance, rehab predominantly stands apart from the rest of a nursing facility and often administrators don’t completely understand its complexities.

 For this reason, facilities often outsource the entire rehab team to third party vendors. It can create an internal rift between the rehab team and the rest of the team.

Freda highly recommends the integration of in-house rehab but warns that attempting it alone has its own risks. 

Administrators don't have the time or expertise required to manage the billing and oversee the productivity of rehab programs. They also typically lack the clinical expertise necessary to ensure therapists are complying with the rules and regulations and keeping up to date with current practices. 

Seeking out an in-house rehab management corporation such as QRM will alleviate these risks and also other challenges the rehab department may encounter,  such as staffing and communication.

FIND OUT MORE ABOUT QRM!

• QRMhealth.com¬†

 

Related Episodes

• Teletherapy During Covid-19
• What is PDPM and How Will it Affect You? With Marc Zimmet of Zimmet Healthcare

LinkedIn isn’t just another social media platform.

When done correctly, it can potentially provide a staggering number of views and engagement every week as well as a space equipped for all sorts of transactions. 

LinkedIn has great potential to help the senior care industry by amplifying innovations geared towards the 60+ market and connecting such startups with Venture Capital Firms.

Despite the power and reach of this platform, only 1% of users regularly post content and consequently reap rewards of up to billions of views per week. Judi provides some tips to help business owners and professionals gain a place in this minute but incredibly influential sector. 

These include:

• Sharing the spotlight with others
• Showing up as a leader not just as a professional
• Commenting to start conversations

 

FOLLOW JUDI!

• JudiFox.com
• Judi on LinkedIn
• The Judi Fox Show

 

Related Episodes

1. Ep. 12 - LinkedIn Marketing with Shanee Moret
2. Ep. 37 - Why Should I Post on LinkedIn - Moe Rabi

Tony Braswell is a veteran in this space and has been in the Nursing Home staffing industry for 29 years. 

Most of that time was spent on the excruciatingly slow task of calling up nurses one at a time trying to get them to come to work. This tedious process needed to be faster. 

Much faster.

A brainwave hit Braswell one day when his son purchased just a single bottle of ketchup from Amazon. He realized that with the scope and advancement of modern technology, nursing home staffing could be automated and accomplished much more quickly and efficiently.

The Gale App’s method of flexible scheduling is key in a country already short 1,000,000 nurses and losing more every day from burnout. 

The strict schedules, bi-weekly paydays, and exhausting last minute double-shifts of the past don’t work anymore.

It's time for facilities to adapt to the changing demands of the senior care industry. 

Over 20,088 nurses have already signed on with the Gale App, and, as the U.S. is rapidly developing into a gig-economy, the technology is set to become a serious contender in the nursing staffing sphere.

LEARN MORE!

• Learn more about the Gale App and Tony Braswell at https://www.usegale.com/!¬†

In today’s episode we meet Eric Harter, president of Rapid CPAP, who goes into detail on how to correct and prevent breathing and respiratory problems in short-term patients. 

It is a frustrating reality that many patients referred to Nursing Homes from hospitals will often suffer these issues in the very first days of adjustment. This may be the result of details about additional health constraints being left out of a patient’s report.

This unfortunate pattern is particularly prevalent in this new world of COVID, where many nursing home are really struggling to keep a healthy census.

Eric explains how implementing a program to address these problems will not only succeed in decreasing the rate of short-term patient returns but also demonstrate a nursing home’s proactivity and show hospitals that they are a good place to refer patients. 

Rapid CPAP programs include telehealth experts and respiratory therapists who educate nursing staff on correct procedures for respiratory equipment and write recommendations for patient care and measure outcomes of treatment. 

 

Follow Eric!

• LinkedIn
• https://www.rapidcpap.com/
• Keep an eye out for Eric‚Äôs new podcast! The Hey Can Someone Please Call Respiratory Podcast

The case managers in the hospitals need to know what level of care is available in the community that will be appropriate for the patient they are trying to discharge.  

A nursing home is not always the best solution for a hospital discharge. There can be other community-based options that are better for the patient. 

It's like Expedia for travel. Before Expedia, you'd have to make dozens of calls to hotels, flights, and rental car companies to make the arrangements for a trip. 

That's where the current landscape looks like for hospital case managers. They don't have that one resource, the Expedia if you will, to streamline all this information in one place. 

With CareAvailibility - you can literally insert the needs of a particular patient, check off all the boxes and the system will spit out the best solution for them. 

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Learn more about Care Availability - www. CareAvailability.com 

Follow Michael on LinkedIn 

In this episode, we meet the founder and CEO of Oasis Day Center, Israel Lavrinoff. 

Israel is a young and energetic entrepreneur who's clearly identified his passion.

 Let's stop waiting for our seniors to die! Let's give them the qualify of life they deserve for as long as possible.  After all we are all going to die someday, so let's live life to the fullest. 

Israel best describes the role of his center as 'monitoring the social blood pressure' of the participants. 

Learn more about Israel and his work at OasisDayCenter.com