Lead the Way, with Continued Person-Centered Care Training

For years, home care providers in long-term care have been presented with a dilemma: how to stand out for excellence in care without any official quality ratings to back up their claims. 

 Now they can. As CareScout seeks to make “quality” really mean something in long-term care, the CareScout Quality Network (CQN) is stepping in to fill this long-overlooked gap in the home care world. CareScout invites long-term care providers seeking to join its network to participate in a well-vetted quality assessment and survey process that includes methods for measuring person-centered care.

CareScout designed this process for home care providers as well as home health, assisted living, nursing facility, hospice, and adult day care providers. It gathers tangible, objective data that results in quality ratings that are meaningful, believable, and verifiable.

Finally, home care providers can offer quantifiable proof of their person-centered care approach, helping them to stand out in a crowded market. They also now have a way to establish baseline measures from which to improve their care. Care seekers and their loved ones now have a way to evaluate providers and find person-centered home care options. Everyone wins. 

The key to taking advantage of this development and stay in the lead? Participating in continued training and assessments in person-centered care.

Continued training in person-centered care helps staff learn and practice a deeper, more individualized, and more connected model of caregiving. At a minimum, training should cover the key principles of person-centered care, such as honoring client goals, preferences, and values in care planning. Other important training topics include:

• Awareness and sensitivity on issues of race, ethnicity, age, sexual orientation, and gender identity 

• Empathy in caregiving 

• Shared decision-making 

• Fostering client self-direction in treatment planning 

• Clear, respectful communication 

• The role of families, peers, and co-workers 

• Dementia and dementia care

Look for training that is multilingual and offers self-paced online options that allow staff to complete modules at times convenient to them. All units or modules should include a testing component to help measure employees’ depth of learning and retention of the material. 

A number of organizations offer training in person-centered care specific to home care. They include Home Care Pulse (HCP), whose online training modules are available free to providers in the CareScout Quality Network, and the National Certification Council for Activity Professionals, which offers a Person-Centered Care Community Certification program.

Training may also be available from state health and human services organizations and local colleges and universities. 

Providing highly individualized, person-centered care is never a one-and-done. It takes continued investment in your staff to maintain this high level of quality and ensure ongoing quality improvement for your services. Continued training with assessment is key to ensuring staff retention of person-centered principles and the regular implementation of researched-based best practices and suggestions for person-centered care.

This investment can pay back handsomely as time goes on and your agency builds a reputation for its commitment to person-centered care — a reputation that should earn you the notice of professional referrers as well as care recipients and their loved ones who enthusiastically refer others to you. Potential new hires should notice as well. But this is only the beginning.

Studies show that people receiving research-backed methods of person-centered care are more engaged with their care, and that better engagement leads to improved outcomes. Continued training gives your staff the opportunity to hone their skills in honoring client preferences and values and keep clients directly involved and invested in their own care.

The person-centered model of care relies on direct feedback from care recipients and staff — the persons at the center of the care experience — to measure quality. For example, the CareScout Quality Network surveys clients and provider staff as part of initial and continued assessments of a provider’s commitment to person-centered care.

In CareScout surveys, measures for clients include but are not limited to their perceptions of quality of care, engagement, respect, communication, and empathy from provider staff.

Measures for staff include how well they feel supported, respected, and enabled to deliver quality, person-centered care as well as the extent to which they feel valued by their employer for their unique contributions.

These are measures that matter to care recipients and caregivers. Imagine being able to cite them on your web site and in your marketing and recruiting efforts.

Spotlighting the fact that you offer continued training to your staff can set you apart from your competition. For example, the research-based online learning modules available to providers through the CareScout Quality Care Academy helps administrators and caregivers become well-versed in:

• Social determinants of health 

• Cultural diversity  

• Providing care to LGBTQ+ clients 

• Customer service in health care 

• Emotional losses in the elderly 

• Dealing with family members 

• Activities for individuals living with Alzheimer’s disease

These topics address specific aspects of individualized care and can add substance to your marketing claims. They should resonate not only with care seekers but with community physicians, discharge planners, and other referral sources who want to make sure they are referring to providers who stay focused on these areas. 

According to The SCAN Foundation, when it comes to person-centered care for older adults with multiple chronic conditions or functional limitations, “there is widespread belief, much of it backed by evidence, that the incremental resources devoted to such care in relation to ‘usual care’ result in a superior patient and family experience.”¹

As staff become more adept at honoring clients’ goals, preferences, and values, the care experience should continue to improve for clients and employees alike. 

Research shows that investing in a person-centered care climate can help create a more positive work environment. Studies of the effect of person-centered care programs on caregivers have found significantly higher ratings of job satisfaction,^2,3 reduced stress of conscience,⁴ lower emotional exhaustion,^5,6 and higher morale.⁷ 

Continued training in person-centered care is a proof point for positioning your agency as a leader in long-term care. Don’t balk at the continued investment training requires in time and resources. The benefits are many. Making the positive changes that result from continued training part of your message can be a key to maintaining and growing your business.