Long Term Care Consulting, Management and Senior Housing Development Services by Ecumen

Ecumen Consulting Services provides long term care consulting, management, development and repositioning services for nursing homes, assisted living, Continuing Care Retirement Communities (CCRCs) and home care and community-based services. We help long term care providers, assisted living and other senior housing organizations and aging services providers improve, innovate and enhance services for the people and communities they serve.

Nursing Home Management, CCRC Management, Assisted Living Management

• Nursing Home, CCRC and Assisted Living Management: Do you own or operate a nursing home, CCRC or assisted living community, but feel that you need additional resources to improve your operations, such as financial analysis and management, employee training, leadership development, business office support, market assessment, marketing, technology, human resource systems, and/or repositioning? Through management by Ecumen, we deliver all of these services and more.

Nursing Home Regulatory and Survey Compliance

• Regulatory and Survey Compliance: We help nursing homes and CCRCs improve their regulatory compliance record and stay compliant. Tools we use include mock surveys, training in charting and documentation, chart review, quality indicator analysis, preparation for Joint Commission of Accreditation of Hospital Organizations, and training for employees on their roles in managing the survey process.

Increasing Nursing Home Reimbursements

• Optimizing Reimbursement: Is your nursing home or CCRC receiving the maximum Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements that it should be? Do you have opportunities to provide services that would enhance your customers’ experience and your reimbursement mix? We help nursing homes and CCRCs optimize their reimbursement levels and mixes by analyzing state case mix, MDS, PPS and QI/QM.

Strategic Planning for Long Term Care Providers

• Strategic Planning: What is your organization’s vision? How do you achieve it? What is the art of the possible? How do you get there? Is your aging services organization stuck in the 20th Century? Do you feel that you have to make changes to prepare for the age wave? Not sure which steps to take? Members of our team have helped numerous organizations see future opportunities and develop plans for getting there. Our strategic planning helps you see the big picture and create a path of possibilities with a map for realizing them.

Repositioning a Nursing Home

• Repositioning Housing and Aging Services: Is your nursing home too big? Does the area you serve need different services? Do you want to expand into independent living or assisted living? Do you have the opportunity to be a CCRC? What is the market telling you about new opportunities? We help you answer these questions and develop the strategy to reposition aging services in your community.

Senior Housing Development

• Senior Housing Development: Developing senior housing can be a huge, complex undertaking. But what a rewarding experience when you do it right and you create housing and services that benefit the people you serve and are financially successful. We provide ease to our clients by bringing all of the pieces to the project from concept to completion. Ecumen also can manage and market the senior housing and services community if you choose.

Quality Assurance and Long Term Care

• Quality Assurance: Is your quality assurance program where it needs to be? We help nursing homes and CCRCs develop new quality assurance plans and improve existing ones.

Interim Nursing Home Administrators, Assisted Living Leadership

• Interim Leadership Solutions: We help nursing homes, CCRCs and assisted living communities through transitions to new leadership. Our services include providing interim professionals, including administrators, directors of nursing, assisted living and clinical directors. In addition to interim leadership solutions, we can conduct your search to fill critical leadership positions at your nursing home, CCRC or assisted living community.

Marketing for Nursing Homes, Assisted Living and CCRCs

• Marketing: Does your nursing home, CCRC or assisted living community have a waiting list? If no, why not? Do people want to live there? Do you have the right service and product offerings for the geographic area you serve? Are there opportunities for revenue that you are missing? We help long term care providers answer all-important questions and develop solutions to seize and maximize revenue opportunities while at the same time making your site a better place for customers and employees.

Nursing Homes and Crisis Management

• Crisis Management: Crises at nursing homes, CCRCs or assisted living communities aren’t good for anyone. If crises aren’t solved, customer satisfaction plummets, the spirit of employees sinks, and reputations can be irreparably harmed. We have helped nursing homes and others work through many different and complex situations to emerge as a better operation.

Nursing Homes and Risk Management

• Risk Management: The ideal situation for nursing homes or CCRCs is to never have a crisis situation. We help long term care providers significantly minimize their risk through intensive operational analysis. Our risk management consulting can be applied in a specific operational area of your nursing home, CCRC or assisted living community, or we can do a system wide analysis.

Director of Nursing Training and Orientation

• Director of Nursing (DON) Training and Orientation: The director of nursing (DON) is one of the most important leadership positions in a nursing home or care center. However, too often, people receive the director of nursing title without sufficient preparation and background in what this leadership position entails. Ecumen’s customized director of nursing training helps the new director of nursing prepare for this new role and the responsibilities, challenges and opportunities that come with it.

Nursing Home Operations Analysis

• Long Term Care and Nursing Home Operations Analysis: Is your nursing home or care center working at an optimal level of performance? Our long term care and nursing home consultants provide a focused clinical and/or operational systems analysis based on data that is most important to your operations, including customer satisfaction, regulatory compliance, survey performances, quality measure/indicators, and case mix. Based on this analysis we develop a strategic plan for getting your nursing home or CCRC to the level that you desire.

Nursing Home Dietary and Nutrition Services

• Long Term Care Dietary and Nutrition Services: Are your nursing home, assisted living community or CCRC dietary and nutrition services causing people to rave about you or is the opposite occurring? High-quality food is essential to a high-quality customer experience in long term care. Ecumen works with you to deliver solutions in dietary and nutrition services, including: the quality of the dining experience, quality and nutritional content of food, cost effectiveness, regulatory compliance, and training and staffing.

Wound Care

• Wound Care: Care for pressure sores and other wounds can be a long term care nurse’s most perplexing challenge. Ecumen trains long term care nurses in wound and ulcer risk assessment, tissue assessment, care and care planning. Ecumen provides training on the National Pressure Ulcer Advisory Panel pressure ulcer staging system, and we teach your nursing home’s nurses how to differentiate between the various types of ulcers and how to manage them. We also share with you the newest technology in wound care management.

Long Term Care Education and Training

• Tailored Long Term Care Education and Training: Manuals can be instructive, but most people learn better when they are participating in an interactive setting and can ask questions and listen to discussion among peers. Our instructors teach a wide variety of long term care courses that we can deliver to your site or that you can take at our classrooms at our home office in Minneapolis/St. Paul. We also work with individual nursing homes, CCRCs and assisted living communities to develop courses that fit their particular situation and learning or training need. Here are a sampling of course titles:
  • Do You Have That Thing Called It? Creating Communities of Care Where People Love to Live and Work
  • Navigating the Psychoactive Medications Maze in Long Term Care
  • How to Make Sure Your Marketing Isn’t Simply Spitting in the Wind
  • Public Relations 101: How to Tell Your Story to the People Most Important to You
  • Make Paperwork Work for You to Increase Medicare and Medicaid Reimbursements
  • Leadership That Turns Long Term Care Customers into Your Best Advertising
  • Code, Code, Everywhere a Code: How to Decipher Them and Improve Your Service
  • You’re a Director of Nursing, Now What? A Guide for Success in This Critical Leadership Role
  • Navigating the MDS and Maximize Reimbursements
  • Infection Control: What You Need to Know Now
  • Building for Success: How to Build the Right Team to Create A Great Community
  • Mapping an Effective Care Plan