This week, the Moving Forward Nursing Home Quality Coalition is launching its nine action plans!

Building on recommendations from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering & Medicine (NASEM)’s 2022 report on nursing home quality, the action plans outline strengths-based approaches to promote nursing home quality through policy and practice improvements across a range of key issues.

Each documents a particular challenge facing nursing homes today, explains why it is important to residents’ quality of life, defines focused goals for addressing that challenge, and provides a step-by-step path the Coalition will take to achieve them over a year. They also describe how nursing homes, state agencies, federal policymakers and others can collaborate in the short term, while identifying core funding needs for long-term success and sustainability.

To learn more, download and read the plans on the Coalition’s website here, and join the Coalition for its launch event this coming Wednesday, July 19, at 2PM ET. Register here.

The action plans are a vital opportunity to elevate the needs of nursing home residents and staff, engage with leaders on near-term solutions, and continue to shape a vision for the long-term quality of nursing homes. With funding from The John A. Hartford Foundation, LeadingAge convened the Coalition one year ago. Chaired by Alice Bonner, Senior Advisor for Aging at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, the Coalition brought diverse nursing home stakeholders together to prioritize recommendations from the NASEM report and take the first steps to realize them in the short term.

Some highlights include:

• Developing specific policy proposals to help incentivize the transition to household models.
• Developing a targeted two-day survey model that will support a focus on issues of person-centered care and improve surveyor capacity.
• Working with workforce training and development leaders to design and pilot a standardized CNA career pathway reflecting the federal Registered Apprenticeship program framework.

Now, as the Coalition moves into its next phase of work, LeadingAge members have the opportunity to help lead the way on many of the activities outlined in each of the action plans and possibly take on implementation of one of the action plans in your state or community.

It’s time to act, and with the Coalition leading, meaningful change is on the way to make all nursing homes communities where lives are nurtured, residents are empowered, and where people want to work.