Staff assist: a resource to improve nursing home quality and staffing

Abstract

Purpose: This study describes the creation and use of a web-based resource, designed to help nursing homes implement quality improvements through changes in staffing characteristics.

Design and methods: Information on staffing characteristics (i.e., staffing levels, turnover, stability, and use of agency staff), facility characteristics (e.g., ownership, size), and quality (i.e., quality measures [QMs]) coming from 2,946 nursing homes were utilized in a simulation analysis. The simulation was used to predict changes in each of 11 QMs, based on changes in staffing characteristics for individual nursing homes using the web-tool.

Results: The website was visited 2,347 times in the first 6 months after it became operational. Evidence would suggest that it was useful in informing nursing home management of the importance of staffing and facilitating staffing changes; moreover, active users of the website showed improvements in quality, with an average of 5 of the 11 QMs improving by more than 1%.

Implications: The web-based resource may be a feasible low-cost model that can be replicated, to provide further information for other areas of quality improvement in nursing homes.