Partnership improves care for regional nursing home residents

COOKEVILLE – The Cookeville Regional Charitable Foundation and the Upper Cumberland Healthcare Preparedness Coalition are partnering together for a regional project aimed at improving care for nursing home residents by offering Upper Cumberland nursing facilities environmental cleaning and disinfection training and standardized equipment. 

This project is being funded through a grant from the Civil Monetary Penalty Quality Improvement Program administered by the Tennessee Department of Health (TDH).  TDH administers grants to entities that develop project proposals which directly improve patient outcomes and meet proposal requirements.  This project will focus on reducing and preventing healthcare associated infections throughout the region.  

“Environmental cleaning standards and processes often vary from facility to facility, and from staff to staff, leading to confusion and unintentional gaps in care for elderly patients who frequently travel between healthcare facilities,” said Kristi Langford, Upper Cumberland Healthcare Coalition coordinator. “We believe that by standardizing environmental cleaning knowledge, equipment, and measurement tools for nursing facilities throughout the region, the project will help decrease the number of healthcare associated infections for Upper Cumberland nursing home residents.” 

The project includes training conferences in collaboration with CleanHealth Environmental. Twenty-one skilled nursing facilities are participating in the project.  After training is complete, nursing facilities will receive standardized durable cleaning equipment and ATP (Adenosine Triphosphate) monitors. The monitors will allow facilities to measure cleaning effectiveness over time and uniformly measure performance.   

“Collaboration is essential to the success of a regional project such as this. It is encouraging to see so many organizations working together in an effort to improve quality of life and healthcare deliverables for nursing home residents throughout the Upper Cumberland,” said John Bell, Cookeville Regional Charitable Foundation Director.   

For more information about this project, please visit: http://www.uchcoalition.org/

The Cookeville Regional Charitable Foundation is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization. The Foundation’s mission is to enhance the quality and availability of healthcare in the Upper Cumberland by: offering charitable assistance to local patients; supporting free or reduced healthcare services for the public; promoting compassionate programs for patients; and encouraging investment in Cookeville Regional Medical Center.

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