by Flora Bessey, Pharm.D., BCGP

What do you know about the medical records department? How often do you interact with them? Do you see them only once every three months, at the quarterly meeting? To you, are they the annoying people that are always bugging you to sign documents? Do you appreciate how vital they are?

The medical records departments of our facilities are often misunderstood and underappreciated, yet they fulfill many incredibly important needs. And having a well-functioning and highly-trained medical records staff will lead to much better resident outcomes, as well as better performance on survey.

by Karl Steinberg, MD, CMD, HMDC

We are happy to report that as of June 18, 2018, Assemblymember Susan Eggman has withdrawn her bill, AB 937, that would have made it very difficult to change code status if a person made a request regarding resuscitative measures, then lost decisional capacity.  The WAVE has covered AB 937 in detail previously, so we will not go over the entire history here. However, this bill passed the Assembly last year with support from the Ombudsman Association, Disability Rights California, the California Lawyers Assocation’s Trusts and Estates Section, CANHR and others. CALTCM and the Coalition for Compassionate Care of California (CCCC) were the only organizations formally opposed, and the California Medical Association issued a letter of concern but stopped short of formal opposition.

by Timothy Gieseke MD, CMD

Recently, I read with interest a report on the efforts of the Cleveland Clinic and Baystate Medical Center (Massachusetts) to develop a preferred Post-Acute Provider Network.

In my area, both of the referral hospitals have been meeting with community SNFs to better coordinate care transitions and reduce readmissions.  I have been invited to attend one of the hospitals monthly care coordination meetings where the focus has been on presenting readmission data and attempting to understand what could have gone better.  In addition, there have been brief discussions on improving palliative care, diabetes care, and other clinical topics. I’m not aware of either hospital narrowing their networks of providers as in the above article, but suspect the discharge planners do have their preferences based on similar metrics.

Background: Medications play a key role for frail seniors in community or post-acute settings. Yet, medication misuse can increase health risks and negatively impact outcomes. The Community Medication Education, Data and Safety (C-MEDS) program was designed to provide brief, in-depth, at-home customized medication safety interventions for seniors and family caregivers. Key goals of the C-MEDS program include: (1) reducing medication-related problems, (2) increasing self-efficacy in medication management, (3) improving communication and coordination of care between the patient and caregiver and the health care system and (4) improving medication adherence. It is a pharmacist-directed program, utilizing a team of geriatrics experts.