? re-med "a"

[ktwlpn]

We've been told we must do anything we can to keep our beds full-we accept admissions at any hour of the day (or night) and day of the week.Our admissions staff are aggressively recruiting (sounds like the NFL,doesn't it? ) short term skilled rehab and respite care residents. The social worker told us today that our Medicare "A" people should be self administering meds. Anyone ever heard of this? All of the residents have the right to do so but we can't MAKE them can we? We never did it before with Med A people-is this something" new and improved" like MDS 3.0?

PS-we heard thru the grapevine that our facility is also trying to bring in a dialysis company-in the old cafeteria-LOL! Sounds like a can of worms to me -unless it was completely dissassociated from us.

[AUNTFESTUS]

In response to self medication administration, if you read CMS resident's rights, etc. self med administration is a choice that is to be offered to each resident. We used to do quarterly questionaires on our residents asking does resident request to take their own medications or are they appropriate and than depending on the response than a self med administration check list was done to see if resident would be safe to do this. We could look at cognitive deficits, visual deficits, etc. anything that may interfere with safe self med administration. If a resident's response was yes that is as well as other areas to assess. My old D.O.N. did away with these which I felt was a stupid mistake but who am I? lol...I am waiting for it to creep back up with state and by the sounds of this social worker it obviously was a policy at another facility or she has been to a recent 2.0/3.0 workshop. Let us know how your facility handles this.