NY Assisted Living Assessment

Update: we have now added another New York Assessment, DSS-4449D, "Nursing/Functional/Social Assessment" for Assisted Living Programs. Call for an online demonstration. Click HERE to view document.

NY - Medical Evaluation

PALs has added two new assessment forms for New York's Assisted Living communities; 1. Medical Evaluation and 2. Mental Health Evaluation. These forms are user-defined, so you can edit the form to customize it for your "brand" and to speed up data entry.

For more information please visit out website at www.PALsSoftware.com

Resident Appraisal For Ca Residential Care Facilities

PALs has added the Resident Appraisal assessment for California users. PALs, using its user-defined assessments, has always captured the needed data. Now we have formatted it to look like the actual form, Lic 603a (7/99).

To view the form, click HERE. For further information please visit our website and download our free trial at: www.PALsSoftware.com

Medication Protocol - for Assisted Living

A new user asked if PALs has a feature where a person could enter a Protocol of 5-10 medications and have them all be entered at once. At the time we didn't. But the idea sounded like a good one; so four hours later that feature was added to PALs.

PALs, Professional Assisted Living Software, as the name implies is primarily developed for Assisted Living Communities. The user making this request is operating a Detox center and Residential program for  Addiction Recovery. This same protocol process can be used for entering Standing Orders, or a Protocol of treatments.

PALs is very appreciative for all the suggestions made by our faithful users who have partnered with us to make PALs the preferred software for residential communities.

For more information, please visit our website at www.PALsSoftware.com or call.

New Hampshire Assisted Living Assessment

PALs has added New Hampshire's, "Resident Assessment Tool / Needs Determination" form.
This once again demonstrates PALs flexibility with its User-Defined Assessment tool.
For a FREE trial, visit our website at www.PALsSoftware.com

Staff Credentialing in Assisted Living

Assisted Living Communities are required by regulations to verify a variety of staff credentialing from criminal background checks to tuberculosis testing. How to keep track of them all, and add an agency's own requirements?

PALs approaches this through the assessment process and a customized report. Our assessment library now contains a Staff Credentialing template that you  can customize for your state and agency and print reports telling you what documentation is missing, or when CPR training is due, or when a license is about to expired.

See video below for more information, and to try this process yourself, simply download PALs FREE Trial from our website at www.PALsSoftware.com

Click HERE for video of PALs Credentialing Process.

Georgia's PHYSICIAN’S MEDICAL EVALUATION FOR ASSISTED LIVING

PALs has completed another state's assisted living assessment.

PALs library of user-defined assessment now contains Georgia's "Physician's Medical Evaluation". This form not only contains the required data, but also is formated to look like the state's form.

To review this form and the entire PALs assisted living products, visit our website at www.PALsSoftware and download our FREE trial.

Staffing and Profits for Assisted Living Communities

To be profitable, you simply need to keep your revenue greater than your expenses. In Assisted Living, income can be divided into three groups; property related, food costs, and staff costs - providing assisted living services. I will focus on staff, the largest of the three groups.

To relate resident fees to services, we need to use the common denominator of time. Regardless of the service (ADL Assist, bath, escort, etc.), it involves staff time. And resident's needs or preferences may require more or less staff time. For example, one resident may "want" (not need) a staff person to remain with them during a bath for reassurance, while another resident may only want assistance while stepping into the bath. The former situation may require 45 minutes of staff time, while the latter only require 15 minutes.

In addition to direct staff time for a service, we also need to add in administrative overhead, defined as costs related to payroll, staff hiring/training, supervision plus a little profit. By adding in these related costs, each staff person becomes a profit center.

Next we need to add in a cost for Shift Productivity. This is the difference between the total shift hours (8 hours) and the direct service hours (6 hours of direct care to residents) or 6/8 = 75% shift productivity. In this scenario, we need to add 2 hours to the cost of our staff person to get an accurate cost.

So if we pay our direct care staff $10 per hour, plus 35% administrative overhead plus shift productivity of 75% (leaving 25% to add into costs) we get a total cost of 10 + 3.50 + 2.50 = $16.00 / 4 = $4.00 per 15 minutes of direct care.

Now we need to assess each resident for the amount of time they need or want for a service and either sell them the service directly (Ala Carte), or combine a number of services into a package of care. For example, you might have a Basic Assisted Living Package of 3 hours per week; Package A provides 6 hours per week; and other packages depending on service time. Note how this model is both transparent and easily documented. We're not assessing "needs", which can be difficult to explain as it involves professional judgement, rather both resident/family and staff can agree to minutes of care. When a resident is documented as using additional hours of care a care conference is scheduled to explain the need to move to the appropriate level of care.

Managing staff is also simplified. The staff scheduler is given the "Shift Productivity" level and told to schedule accordingly. By monitoring the shift schedule, we ensure profits. In addition, if staff want more hours, they need to "create a customer" or sell their services, and if they provide more care than they document or report (service creep) they will find themselves overworked. If they complain about how hard they work, you show them the total direct care minutes for their shift assignments and ask them where the discrepancy is (who is getting more time than documented).

I think you will see staff morale improve under this system, as they are all working with the same shift-productivity ratio, another words, each shift has approximately the same number of direct care minutes. If someone want to work more hours, increase their shift from 4 to 6 hour for example, they only need to demonstrate the need (or create a customer for their time).

The entire process above can be supervised by management by reviewing the shift productivity schedule when the staff work schedule is released and ensuring that the actual daily schedule reflects the posted staff schedule.

Of course, PALs give you all the tools you need to setup the above. We have a service pricing tool which calculates the staff's hourly wages + Adm Overhead + Shift Productivity = Total Staff Cost per hour. PALs also has a resident assessment form to calculate resident costs (either ala carte or packages). PALs will create a weekly staff work schedule; daily shift assignment sheets; and monthly documentation sheets to record variations to the minutes of care. Finally, PALs will create a monthly invoice for resident care that is supported by a paper trail from Service Agreement to Service Documentation.

PALs can also be setup to record staff time and service documentation electronically. This way, a report is easily generated noting the variation in service minutes for each resident.

For a free trial of this "System of Care" go to our website, www.PALsSoftware.com and download a free trial of PALs Executive.

DOH 4397 ALR Personal Data and Resident Evaluation - NY

It's done! We've added form 4397 for New York users to our assessment library.

This form, needed to look-like the form provided by the Department of Health. All eight pages were included, in two parts. Hence, Sections 1-2 and Sections 3-7 can be completed and printed separately.

To view this form, go to our website at www.PALsSoftware.com and download the free trial of PALs Executive. When you call for an Activation Code, simply request that the New York assessment be emailed to you. Enjoy ~

Exceeding Users Expectations

I just love it when a user calls with a request, and we can immediately meet it.

This week a user called saying they were just surveyed, and the surveyors gave her two forms to complete which essentially guided the process. The request was for PALs to computerize the forms, so they could do an internal audit monthly to be sure they were always in compliance.

Because PALs allows for user-defined assessments and user-defined QA projects, the data entry form was easily created, and can be easily edited by our user. The finished report was customized to look like the surveyors guide so they could share information in a familiar format.

Don’t Buy Assisted Living Software!

You don’t really want to buy assisted living software, what you want to do is find a solution to a problem and put systems in place to ensure resident-centered quality care.

For example, if you want to improve your medication management, and put a system in place to ensure medication orders are renewed as needed and the medications administered (and documented) as orders, you may want to consider PALs Medication Manager.

If you want to ensure that Resident service agreements meet standards, that services are given as agreed, and invoiced appropriately, PALs Executive would put the necessary systems in place. With this system, your organization integrity is protected as you will be doing what you agreed to do in the resident service agreements. PALs will print a daily shift assignment sheet for workers, so they what services to provide, and a documentation form to note conformity, or any variations.

If you are concerned about meeting other regulatory compliance issues, such as staff credentialing or training; or needs to supervise a residents plan of care or physician orders by certain dates, PALs has the systems for you.

If you may need to ensure that resident assessments meet regulatory requirements, and your agency’s needs. With PALs, you can create and customize your own assessments.

Finally, if you are finding it difficult to remain profitable, PALs has a one report that will monitor profitability, so you can review it when staff schedules are released, and monitor it daily for compliance. See 7 Steps to Profitability below.

To download a FREE trial of PALs, simply go to www.PALsSoftware.com .

Michigan Assessment Plan for AFC Residents

Last week we had two requests to include Michigan's Assisted Living Assessment in our assessment library. Since we pride ourselves on listening to our customers, this assessment is now included.

PALs offers user-defined assessments for when the content is more important than the format. But when you want a specific format, so it looks like a specific form, a custom assessment is created and saved in our library.

To review this and other assessments, simply go to www.PALsSoftware.com and download our FREE PALs Executive trial.