An online schedule from the IRS lets taxpayers know when to expect their economic stimulus checks to be sent. The schedule is based on the last two digits of your social security number. It could be a welcome boost in these hard economic times, but it will go only to those who have filed their federal tax returns for 2007.
 
Many direct-care workers are eligible for tax relief – not only in the form of the stimulus payment but also through the Earned Income Tax Credit. So if you are a direct-care worker who  has not yet filed a federal tax return, you may want to do so. And if you know direct-care workers who may not have filed, pass on the word.

Elise Nakhnikian is PHI’s Senior Online Editor

Registration is still open for a March 27 webinar on Creating a Supportive Organizational Culture for DSPs. The  webinar is the second in a six-part series on proven ways of reducing turnover among direct service professionals (DSPs). It was created by ANCOR, the University of Minnesota Research and Training Center on Community Living, and model agencies from across the country.For this month’s installment, Amy Hewitt of the University of Minnesota Research and Training Center on Community Living will be joined by a provider and a DSP. The three will discuss how supportive organizational cultures improve job satisfaction, performance, and turnover rates for DSPs. They’ll describe the characteristics of organizations that successfully find, keep, and empower DSPs. And they’ll outline the role of organizational leaders and strategies for building a successful organizational culture.

The webinar will be held from 12:30 to 2 p.m. EDT. The cost is $99 for ANCOR members and $198 for nonmembers.  Recordings of each session in the series may also be purchased. To register, or to see the schedule of upcoming events in the series, go to ANCOR’s website. Registrations must be completed by March 24. Email jmccandless@ancor.org or call 703-535-7850, ext. 107 if you have questions.

 Elise Nakhnikian is PHI’s Senior Online Editor

Direct-care workers participating in a Massachusetts grant program communicated significantly better after getting specialized training in English comprehension, clinical skills, and “soft skills” like communication, peer mentoring, and leadership. “Perhaps the most far-reaching outcome of ECCLI was an improvement in communication,” write Janice M. Heineman and colleagues in The Qualitative Evaluation of ECCLI (pdf), a research and evaluation brief from the Commonwealth Corporation. “It was reported in all organizations and directly affected all levels of personnel, clients/residents, and family members, as well as indirectly affecting operations and quality of care.”

As one nurse supervisor told the researchers: “Communication has improved a lot. I think CNAs don’t feel so much like, ‘You’re the nurse and we can’t contribute anything.’ They feel like, ‘I know there’s something wrong,’ and they’ll come to us more readily with that. And I think we are more receptive because we know they know more.”

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Using a few agency nursing assistants to fill in as needed doesn’t seem to hurt care quality in nursing homes, but relying too heavily on them does, according to a report in Medical Care Research and Review. Homes that used more than 14 full-time equivalent (FTE) agency nursing assistants per 100 residents within the past year did worse on all 14 of the quality measures studied.

“Nurse Aide Agency Staffing and Quality of Care in Nursing Homes” is only the second study to look at agency staffing in nursing homes – and the first to focus on nursing assistants rather than licensed nurses. (A 2006 report found that facilities where more than 5 percent of the LPNs or RNs were temps had more deficiency citations.) The new study found the influence of nursing assistant agency staffing on care quality to be “pervasive and in many cases of significant magnitude.”

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I had the opportunity to give a presentation on direct-care worker issues in long-term care as part of the UPMC Geriatrics Division’s weekly conference last week in Pittsburgh. The discussion afterwards was very informative, and I came away with a deeper appreciation of the challenges that medical directors face while doing their critical work in local nursing homes.

Geriatricians who work in nursing homes have a tough and often thankless job. They may recognize and attempt to rectify quality of care problems as they attend to individual residents, but their real power to change the underlying systems of care – the root cause of the problems – is limited. A medical director can make important suggestions and offer needed guidance to the administrator or director of nursing (DON), but for most geriatricians, not being on-site 24/7 makes it hard to truly lead change efforts.

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A report to the Iowa legislature recommends that the state increase Medicare and Medicaid payments in order to increase pay. It also recommends raising public awareness of worker shortages and their impact, creating mentoring programs to prevent turnover/increase retention, and other strategies to strengthen the health and long-term care workforce.”Financing the workforce was a common theme; including better pay and benefits and improving Iowa Medicare reimbursements, allowing Iowa to be more competitive in recruitment,” says The Future of Iowa’s Health and Long-Term Care Workforce: The Health and Long-Term Care Workforce Review and Recommendations. (pdf)