RE: CCRC-continuing care retirement centers

[Brenda Chance]

I currently work in a CCRC.  There are some differences, but, basically, if you are working on the skilled nursing unit, then you will continue to follow federal regs just as before.  The main differences I have had are the following:   Not all of our beds are Medicare Certified, so this has been a challenge for me to get used to the fact that some residents will waive medicare benefits to stay in their customary private room.  Also, sometimes, when our independents come in and we do not have a private room in a certified area (only a semi-private), they too will waive benefits.  At the present time, we only do MDS’s for our residents in certified beds, but, soon, we will be doing them on our noncertified beds just to do better care planning and assessment.  Families and residents are much more demanding and have better knowledge bases of their disease processes.  Of course, at times, families feel that they are more competent to take care of their family members.  This has been a real challenge to re-educate families.  Also, they are resistant at times to following federal regs and feel that because they have money, they should get what they want.  We use the neighborhood concept which allows us increased staffing ratios which provides better care. You will find that there is more money for better equipment, etc. and I feel that we provide better care based on our staffing ratios and more up to date equipment.  We also have more staff education due to money not always being an issue.   I highly recommend working at a CCRC.  You have more room for advancement in the future as well as watching the resident from the independent to higher levels of care.  I know many of the independent residents so this makes assessing and care planning easier since I knew their baseline before they came to the skilled unit.   Brenda W. Chance, RN, RAC-C MDS Coordinator     CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This e-mail message, including any attachments, is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply e-mail and destroy all copies of the original message. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, December 31, 2003 2:29 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: CCRC-continuing care retirement centers   I'm going for an interview for an MDS position in a new CCRC.   They are currently under construction and will be opening in the next few months-37 beds with three neighborhoods-post-acute/rehab, dementia and LTC neighborhoods.   I'm excited for the opportunity but hesitant as my employment has been in SNF's including hospital-based, and other traditional LTC's in the past.  Hoping we have some listserv members that can help with advice about CCRC's and interview considerations i.e., is MDS staffing ratio similar for this environment and do you complete RAI process for all beds or are only a portion of them in your CCRC certified?  Any responses welcome. Thanks.  RNCATFL