Page 34 - Healthcare News Mar/Apr 2022

Charlene Manor
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stringent criteria to have to be met so above and beyond,” said Laurin.
Skilled nursing can encompass a wide range of care. It can mean short-term care after someone has had surgery, physical or occupational therapy, IV therapy, as well as many other forms of care.
The majority of Charlene Manor’s referrals come from hospitals, but its reach has recently expanded. Due to its high-quality service and the surge seen in hospitals from the pandemic, the Department of Public Health chose to partner with Charlene Manor. Another important col- laborative relationship Charlene Manor has is with Pioneer Valley Hospice & Palliative Care.
Skilled nursing staff include a variety of positions includ- ing RNs, LPNs, CNAs, medical directors, speech/language pathologists, and resident care assistants. And these profes- sionals work together as a team.
Resident care assistants (RCAs) play an integral role within the facility. It’s an introductory role where individu- als who are just starting off in the healthcare career can explore if it’s the right fit for them. They spend an intimate amount of time with residents, providing the most amount of care per day to patients while simultaneously building strong relationships with them.
Charlene Manor focuses on recruiting and aiding those
entering the field, now more than ever — since the pan- demic began, the skilled nursing industry has lost 241,000 caregivers according to AHCA.
“For this reason, it is critically important for us as an or- ganization — we put in place strategies and do everything we can to encourage and nurture and promote these skilled caregivers within our facilities,” said Laurin. “And Charlene Manor specifically has been a community that has had a re- ally strong history of providing employment opportunities and having good care around these positions.”
LeBeau started as a dining services aid at Charlene Manor’s sister facility in Leeds when she was in high school. She’s been with the organization ever since, going from working in dining services to becoming the director of Admissions. She then earned her AIT, went on to get her administrator’s license, and has been administrator at Charlene Manor now for 11 years.
“One of the things that I am most proud of as a Berk- shire Healthcare employee is that our opportunities for growth in this organization are unmatched,” she went on. “There are so many opportunities for growth in this organization.”
LeBeau’s story provides just one example of such growth and opportunities for advancement. Indeed, Berkshire Healthcare offers a nursing program called Stepping Stones which, if accepted, provides aspiring healthcare profession- als a tuition-free path to earning certifications and attend- ing nursing school.
“We’ve had a number of entry-level staff go through nursing programs through our Stepping Stones program
to become LPNs, RNs ... some have gone through to get their BSN, and it’s just incredible the amount that we reinvest because we are not-for-profit,” said LeBeau. “We have a mission, and part of our mission is to reinvest in our people, and we do that every single day here.”
Indeed, while the AHCA/NCAL Silver Achievement in Quality Award is a noteworthy honor, recognition is not the motivation behind Charlene Manor’s skilled nursing services. The most rewarding aspect for those working at the facility is the ability to serve those in Franklin County and beyond.
“The rewards are immense. But speaking about provid- ing care to this population — our residents and patients that we serve become much, much more than that,” said Laurin. “They’re like family. That’s why it’s critically im- portant to recruit and invest in long-standing employees, because these are relationships. This is an industry that
is about relationships. Not just the relationships with the residents, but with their families as well.”
A Focus on Care
Simply put, Charlene Manor has put in extraordinary efforts to help take care of their community members, and its Silver Achievement in Quality Award Silver is just one of many examples of how their work is paying off.
“As an organization, we are very proud of the work that Charlene Manor, and Ashley and her team, have done — especially during such a challenging time,” said Laurin. v
Workforce
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cient salary for the work that they’re doing, and we need to we need to get that right.”
He said he and his colleagues have been working to improve reimbursement for a long time. “You know, it’s frustrating, but the bottom line is we need to get this right. And while it took a pandemic to get us to at least provide some temporary help to a lot of the work that everybody on this call is engaged in, the fact of the matter is, there was a problem before the pandemic. The pandemic just shined a brighter light on
Weapons
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make the mistake of using them,” he explained. “We know that over the decades, that has not been true.”
Elaborating, he said that over the years, the United States has threatened to use nuclear weapons repeatedly, in many circumstances involving countries that did not have nuclear weapons, and Russia has as well. And beyond these threats, there has always been the threat of something hap- pening by accident.
“There have been many, many occasions when we have come within minutes of nuclear war because one side or the other received a false alert and believed they were under attack by the other side,” he explained. “On many of these occasions, we came within minutes of all-out nuclear war because of a computer glitch or some similar technical mistake.”
to ensure an adequate healthcare workforce is available to meet patient demand.”
In the case of home care, adult day
health, and other critical elder-care servic- es, many solutions are needed, said Barbara Bodzin, executive director at LifePath.
“We must elevate the home- and community-based workforce by valuing their knowledge and respecting their work within the home,” she said. “By acknowl- edging the essential work carried out each day through better pay, more compre- hensive benefits, guaranteed hours, job security, and career ladder and training opportunities, we can build a strong and sustainable model of care.” v
the disparities and on the challenges, so we need to get this right.”
Lisa Gurgone, executive director of Mass Home Care, the trade association repre- senting aging-services access points and area agencies on aging, agreed.
“Things are changing. We all know the cost of living in Massachusetts is so high — the cost of everything is so high. These workers cannot continue to work without adequate pay over a long period.”
What’s the Answer?
Workforce issues in elder care are a persistent, national problem. A recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that, while
hospitals, outpatient centers, and other healthcare settings were getting back to pre-pandemic turnover rates by late 2021, long-term care – including nursing care, which was not a topic of the LifePath event – has been much slower to recover.
“Healthcare workers employed as health aides and assistants, those of historically marginalized racial and ethnic groups, and those with young children, particularly women, had persistently high turnover rates and were experiencing a slow re- covery,” the study’s authors note. “These findings suggest that turnover rates are re- turning to pre-pandemic levels across most groups of healthcare workers, yet the recov- ery is uneven; targeted solutions are needed
Given the immense amount of tension in the world now, another glitch of this kind may well lead to calamity, he said, bringing even more urgency to the matter of banning such weapons.
That course is the only logical choice for the planet, said Helfand, adding that the alternative, staying the current course, is not sound thinking.
“Our current policy — maintaining these enormous arsenals with the expectation that they will never be used — is nothing more than the hope for continued good luck,” he told HCN. “And this is a fairly insane basis for national security policy. We need to plan for the future based on reality, not hopes and prayers.
Looming Questions
Returning to that question about whether he’s sensing any momentum on the IPPNW’s broad mission to prevent nuclear war by eliminating such weapons, Helfand said
there are a few narratives that could flow from the present situation.
“Those who build nuclear weapons will argue that we need to have more of them — that argument will gain some traction,” he said. “They’ll say ‘the Russians are really bad — we need to be even stronger, as if the 6,000 nuclear weapons we already have are not enough to do what any- one could possibly want to do with them.
“But there will be another narrative as well,” he went on. “As happened after the Cuban Missile Crisis, when both Kennedy and Khrushchev recoiled in horror from what they had almost done, people around the world are going to look at this moment and say, ‘this was a world-wide near-death experience; we cannot keep rolling the dice and hoping that we’re going to be luck every time — we have to get rid of the weapons.’”
That’s why he looks on this very scary time in the history of the world as something else — an opportunity. v
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