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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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