Presbyterian Communities and Services is pleased to announce that its two senior living communities, Presbyterian Village North (PVN) and Grace Presbyterian Village (GPV), have received a five-star quality rating from Medicare.gov in its Nursing Home Compare rankings. Both continuing care retirement communities are based in Dallas, offering seniors skilled nursing and healthcare services for seniors in need of higher levels of care. Its teams are excited to have received such phenomenal recognition by a national program. The Nursing Home Compare website allows consumers to compare information about nursing homes. It contains quality of care information on every Medicare- and Medicaid-certified nursing home in the country, including over 15,000 nationwide. Nursing homes aren't included on Nursing Home Compare if they aren't Medicare- or Medicaid-certified. These nursing homes can be licensed by the state.
“The five-star rating is a reminder of the quality and service excellence that is such an important part of our mission,” said Ron Kelly, executive director of Presbyterian Village North. “We are called to enrich the lives of those we serve, and we can most effectively do that through aspiring to and achieving the highest quality standards possible. It thrills me to know that through the five-star rating, our community can acknowledge and appreciate the quality team that I see every day. I love that our teammates can go home and tell their families, ‘I work for a five-star community!’”
Kelly attributes the community’s success and ranking to the compassionate and professional teammates. He also acknowledges that the ranking is the result of the excellent clinical leaders who have invested themselves to ensure that the team has the support they need. He feels a sense of pride and admiration for the entire team.
“When you do something that you love, and you do it well, there is a natural tendency to want to grow that ministry,” said Kelly. “With the current expansion of our campus, we know that maintaining the highest levels of quality and service excellence will be even more important. People are not as focused on how big you are; they want to know that they can trust you. We will dedicate ourselves to earning that trust from the growing numbers of those we serve every day.”
Nursing Home Compare was created because healthcare facilities vary in the quality of care and services they provide to their residents in healthcare and skilled nursing services. Reviewing health inspection results, staffing data, and quality measure data are three important ways to evaluate a community’s quality. This information gives you a "snapshot" of type and quality of care delivered to residents.
“To obtain this ranking, an organization needs to show that clinical staffing is above the norm, including an increased amount of coverage by registered nurses, and that quality such as wound care and fall prevention are tracked,” said Darrell Baltimore, executive director of Grace Presbyterian Village. “Hospitals and other care provider organizations look for this rating when determining placement for those patients who need recovery between their hospital stay and return home, while undergoing short-term rehabilitation for procedures such as hip or knee replacement. The focus all year has been on raising our level of care and the skill-set of our front-line employees. We’ve done this through “on the spot” in-service training as well as the monthly clinical training that is a requirement within the Presbyterian Communities and Services organization.”
Grace Presbyterian Village has established a Quality Assessment Process Improvement committee that requires each department to self-audit–to identify an area that needs focus and to report monthly on the progress toward improvement in that area. The medical director is a key member of the committee, and the community continually looks for opportunities to advance in other areas as well. The goal is to constantly raise the bar to ensure that the residents have the highest quality of care possible.