The care and quality of life for nursing home residents in Oklahoma are improving thanks to projects funded through the Oklahoma State Department of Health’s (OSDH) Civil Monetary Penalty (CMP) Fund.
The CMP Fund is made up of fines collected from nursing homes. These funds are redistributed by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid and a portion of the monies returned to the state to improve nursing home care.
Improvements resulting from the project include a decline in residents with one or more falls with major injury (5.4 percent in September 2015 to 5.2 percent in September 2016) and a decrease in the rate of nursing home residents who showed signs of depression, down to 5.7 percent from 6.5 percent in a 12-month period.
The goals of the CMP Fund Program are to:
*Protect the health and property of nursing home residents.
*Promote evidence based practices that improve the quality of care and quality of life.
*Empower staff through culture change.
Michelle Billings is the Assistant Campus Director of the Lackey Health Center at Baptist Village in Oklahoma City.
“We were involved with a CMP-funded project for improving the quality measures through the Quality Assurance/Performance Improvement (QAPI) process,” said Billings. “This program has fine-tuned our QAPI program while providing us the tools and resources to intentionally and methodically discover and improve our quality measures. In fact, our Quality Measure Star Rating increased from four stars to five stars.”
One of the more popular programs that received funding from the CMP Fund is the Music for the Ages program. This program helps nursing homes create a certified Music and Memory Program™ as a non-pharmacological intervention for pain and dementia. Across the state, 50 nursing homes have been recruited for this program with 20 residents in each home getting their own iPods. Nursing home staff is also trained to assist the residents and develop playlists and recruit student volunteers to help the residents with the program.
The next round of project applications is currently being evaluated by the OSDH. Approximately $2.2 million has been allocated for programs in FY2017. Projects are funded for up to three years with various phases of development and evaluation. The projects selected for funding for FY2017 will be announced in early March.
As of September 2016, seven projects were being funded by the CMP Fund.
Visit http://cmp.health.ok.gov for the full report and more information about the CMP Fund.
