Vaccines, Treatments and Promising Practices to Improve Resident Outcomes
CMS QI Voices: Improving COVID-19 Outcomes in Nursing Homes Across America, a new audio series produced by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), is available for listening at https://qioprogram.org/cmsqivoices.
This audio series is designed to help busy medical directors, administrators and directors of nursing and education keep residents and staff safe with actionable information to increase COVID-19 vaccination and use of available treatments and improve infection prevention efforts in nursing home and long-term care settings.
In a special series of three 15-minute episodes, CMS Chief Medical Officer Dr. Lee Fleisher leads clinical discussions with experts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Center for Biologics and Research and the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response. These episodes cover:
- The safety and efficacy of the new bivalent COVID-19 vaccine in long-term care.
- The benefits, risks and side effects of therapeutics for nursing home residents diagnosed with COVID-19.
- National programs and partnerships that support nursing homes teams’ efforts to promote COVID-19 infection prevention and vaccination.
In the remaining five-minute episodes, CMS leaders talk with CMS Quality Innovation Network-Quality Improvement Organizations (QIN-QIOs) and the nursing homes they serve to discuss:
- How to increase COVID-19 vaccine confidence in care settings with high resident turnover.
- How one nursing home is using the power of peer ambassadors to increase vaccine confidence.
- What nursing home staff need to keep doing to help stop the spread of COVID-19.
- When, who and how to cohort in your nursing home.
- How a nursing home serving Native American residents uses a culturally inclusive approach to address health equity and increase vaccine confidence.
The CMS QI Voices: Improving COVID-19 Outcomes in Nursing Homes Across America audio series is available wherever listeners have online access. Nursing home teams may listen at https://qioprogram.org/cmsqivoices or contact LTC@hqi.solutions for more information about the audio series.