The 45th episode of our podcast, Rethink, is now available. With the Biden administration looking to possibly clamp down on the role private equity and real estate investment trusts play in the nursing home industry, CareTrust REIT CEO David Sedgwick says the company is poised for continued growth in the sector. “We never took our foot off the pedal of acquisitions since Covid started,” he said of CareTrust’s growth strategy moving forward. He is concerned about what could come to pass in the ne...
Jul 01, 2022•41 min
The 44th episode of our podcast, Rethink, is now available. The Evangelical Lutheran Good Samaritan Society is approaching its 100th birthday, and while the organization's leaders would like to see the not-for-profit skilled nursing operator provide care for another 100 years – that doesn’t come without enormous challenges. Good Samaritan has had to close or sell nine facilities in just the last eight months, the vast majority of which were in rural communities. Despite the significant headwinds...
Jun 16, 2022•31 min
The 43rd episode of our podcast, Rethink, is now available. Since Ignite Medical Resorts came on to the post-acute care scene in 2017, the central focus has been to do one thing really well. CEO Tim Fields’ goal is to be the best short-term rehab provider in the market. But that doesn’t mean Ignite has rested on its laurels. Park Ridge, Illinois-based Ignite has experienced notable growth — most recently with its entrance into the state of Texas as the operator of four skilled nursing facilities...
Jun 01, 2022•29 min
The 42nd episode of our podcast, Rethink, is now available. This episode of Rethink is sponsored by TeamHealth. Nursing homes with the right training and educational processes may be uniquely positioned to facilitate behavioral health services at a time when the patient population has become increasingly complex. Dr. Wayne Tasker and Dr. Richard Thompson Jr. joined Rethink to share the evolving definition of behavioral health as it applies to pos-acute care and what's changed relative to behavio...
May 17, 2022•39 min
The 41st episode of our podcast, Rethink, is now available. At a time when the industry is facing staffing shortages coupled with looming federal regulations and possible Medicare cuts — all the while recovering from Covid — it can be a scary time to be running a skilled nursing operator. That's according to Bernie McGuinness, CEO of Indiana-based Majestic Care. McGuinness joined Rethink to talk about how proposed Medicare cuts could further stymie the skilled nursing industry's recovery, and ho...
Apr 27, 2022•45 min
The 40th episode of our podcast, Rethink, is now available. This episode of Rethink is sponsored by Reliant Rehabilitation. Shelley Horst has always been passionate about helping skilled nursing facilities better collaborate with their post-acute partners, and her role as director of strategic partnerships at Reliant Rehabilitation allows her to do just that. With an abundance of experience in skilled nursing business development and working in managed care, Horst is able to provide insights thr...
Oct 26, 2021•24 min
Dr. Buffy Lloyd-Krejci made it her life's work to improve infection control practices, founding the consulting firm IPCWell to further that mission in long-term care facilities. As a result, she sees nursing home practices first-hand, and she wasn't surprised by how hard COVID-19 hit these facilities when it started spreading last year. Dr. Lloyd-Krejci worked with Doctors Without Borders in their missions in nursing homes in Detroit and Houston, and continues to work with nursing homes on vario...
May 17, 2021•29 min
In the skilled nursing world, it was a truth universally acknowledged that the Patient-Driven Payment Model was a lifeline for operators trying to navigate the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting “business nightmare.” But the federal government has proposed a recalibration of the new system, and it’s not clear yet what that could mean for providers. Mark Parkinson, the president and CEO of the American Health Care Association, joined Rethink to talk about why SNFs can be more optimistic than in ...
Apr 14, 2021•35 min
The federal government in March ended a year-long nightmare for families across the country when it announced the relaxation of visitation bans at nursing homes in all but a few limited cases. But for the family members who spent 2020 working to reunite with their loved ones, the work won’t end along with the expiration of strict lockdowns. SNN sat down with a pair of those leaders — Mikko Cook and Carrie Leljedal — to learn what they want to see from operators and policymakers in the future. Li...
Mar 24, 2021•31 min
When the first vaccines against COVID-19 received emergency use authorization, long-term care residents and workers at those facilities were at the front of the line to receive them. And as the shots have rolled out, residents have participated at high rates, and new COVID-19 cases among residents have plummeted. Frontline workers have been more hesitant – but with time, that could change. Angela Perry, the administrator at Vernon Manor Nursing Home in Connecticut, joined Rethink to talk about t...
Mar 04, 2021•32 min
Simply maintaining day-to-day operations at a nursing facility in 2020 was a herculean task, but several providers were able to also execute on the roll-out of an I-SNP, a special kind of Medicare Advantage plan for long-term care residents that proponents say provide both clinical and financial benefits to individual facilities. Hank Watson, chief development officer at American Health Plans, sat down with SNN to talk about the experience of launching new I-SNP ventures in 2020 and beyond, and ...
Feb 16, 2021•26 min
Tim Peck and Rob MacNaughton of Curve Health by Skilled Nursing News
Nov 13, 2020•24 min
Third-party rehabilitation providers are a crucial part of clinical care in the skilled nursing setting, and neither the pandemic this year nor an overhaul of Medicare reimbursement last year has changed that fact. But it has changed how rehab providers are working with their SNF partners. Tammy Tuminaro, the recently named CEO of Century Rehabilitation, joined Skilled Nursing News' Rethink podcast to talk about how third-party rehabilitation providers are navigating the pandemic and how Century...
Oct 19, 2020•20 min
The institutional special needs plan model was one of the hottest topics of conversation in the skilled nursing world – of course, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. But for PruittHealth, its role as a Medicare Advantage provider gave it a unique position in its role as a skilled nursing provider, according to the operator's new corporate medical officer, Dr. Rayvelle Stallings. She believes that offering the I-SNP allows PruittHealth to ensure continuity of care in a way that helps navigate the ne...
Aug 07, 2020•23 min
After a disheartening experience working in nursing homes, former director of nursing Susan Ryan spent years spearheading initiatives designed to keep the elderly out of institutional care settings at all costs. But over time, she came to believe that there would always be a need for skilled nursing facilities to serve a specific portion of the aging population — just not the kind that have existed for decades. As the senior director of the non-profit Green House Project, Ryan has traveled the c...
Aug 05, 2020•23 min
As nursing homes navigate COVID-19, the actions they take now could present legal minefields in the months and years to come. Those could stem from lawsuits brought by individuals – or by investigations from the state or federal government. Jon Ferry, a partner at the law firm Bradley Arant Boult Cummings and a former assistant U.S. attorney, joins Rethink to talk about some of the considerations for skilled nursing providers. Listen to this episode to learn: -The nuances of liability regulation...
Jul 09, 2020•32 min
Until scientists develop a vaccine or effective treatment for COVID-19, infection control — already so vital to resident safety — must be at the top of every nursing home operator's list of priorities. For Karen Hoffman, that topic has been the subject of her career over the course of four decades. As a former CMS consultant, current clinical instructor at the University of North Carolina, and 2019 president of APIC, Hoffman has dedicated her professional life to improving infection control and ...
Jun 25, 2020•20 min
As COVID-19 initially swept through nursing homes across the country in March and April, operators and staffers had a key advantage: Just about every state implemented stay-at-home orders that kept public spaces clear for the essential health care workers, reducing the risk of infection. But as spring turns to summer, states around the country have implemented varying degrees of “reopening” plans, setting off increases in case counts — and underscoring the reality that the coronavirus will plagu...
Jun 17, 2020•22 min
LeadingAge CEO Katie Smith Sloan has been outspoken in her calls for increased government support for nursing homes and other senior care providers amid the COVID-19 crisis. As the case count continues to rise and operators face down a new normal with coronavirus at the center of every decision they make, Sloan has loudly and forcefully argued that the industry needs more funding and assistance. Sloan joined SNN's "Rethink" podcast to discuss the feasibility of a federal plan to reopen nursing h...
May 20, 2020•22 min
Randy Oostra, the president and CEO of ProMedica Health System, is well situated to see every angle of the unfolding COVID-19 pandemic in both the acute and pos-acute fields. The Toledo, Ohio-based ProMedica acquired the operations of HCR ManorCare in 2018 – which puts ProMedica in a unique position during a pandemic that is attacking every part of the health care continuum and hitting skilled nursing facilities particularly hard. Listen to this episode to learn: -Why more hospital beds are not ...
Apr 23, 2020•27 min
The Royal Health Group in Massachusetts had long-standing plans to change the location of its skilled nursing facility in the town of Falmuth; what they weren't expecting was that a global pandemic would hit as they planned the transition. Instead of freezing in place, the operator accelerated the move to give the Cape Cod Healthcare system a location for recovering COVID-19 patients. Royal Health CEO James Mamary and vice president of operations Robyn Sloniecki joined Rethink to talk about how ...
Apr 22, 2020•21 min
As the chief medical officer for skilled nursing giant Genesis HealthCare, Dr. Richard Feifer has a direct view into hundreds of individual nursing homes as they deal with the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Dr. Feifer joined "Rethink" to make a direct appeal to leaders about the dire need for personal protective equipment (PPE) and access to COVID-19 testing, two vital weapons against the disease that have been far too hard to come by across the country. He also shared tips gleaned from his work ...
Apr 02, 2020•18 min
As both the chief medical officer for Signature HealthCARE and president of AMDA, the Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine, Dr. Arif Nazir has a micro- and macro-level view on how skilled nursing facilities are fighting the novel coronavirus. Dr. Nazir sat down with SNN to talk about what he's seeing on the front lines, as well as the viability of some of the sweeping proposals that governments have floated to help beat back the COVID-19 tide. Listen to this episode of "Rethink" to...
Mar 23, 2020•22 min
The novel coronavirus outbreak has put skilled nursing facilities on lockdown and disrupted daily life around the world. But health care needs continue apace, and the junction between SNF and hospital is crucial. Angie Roberson, the president of the American Case Management Association and the director of case management at the Spartanburg Regional Healthcare System, joins Rethink to talk about the importance of communication in the face of COVID-19 and the steps hospitals are taking as they wor...
Mar 13, 2020•25 min
In the senior housing and care spectrum, nursing homes typically have the worst reputation among the general public and the press — a negative image that can only worsen in cases of abuse, neglect, or high-profile accidents. As the managing partner and co-founder of Trifecta Public Strategies, Kelli Luneborg-Stern has guided skilled nursing operators through a variety of difficult times, and despite the challenges, she has nothing but praise for the industry. "They simply do not get the credit t...
Feb 26, 2020•26 min
As the CEO of JMD Healthcare Solutions, John Delossantos has had a front-row seat to the Medicare payment model change still roiling the skilled nursing space. So far, Delossantos is upbeat about PDPM's potential to improve the health of both residents and the industry as a whole, but he's also identified some key areas where operators are still making mistakes that could lead to costly reimbursement losses — or, worse, scrutiny from the federal government. Listen to this episode of Rethink to l...
Feb 12, 2020•22 min
The Patient-Driven Payment Model – and all the changes that came with it – arrived officially for skilled nursing providers in October 2019. The new Medicare reimbursement system for SNFs was top of mind throughout the year, but 2020 will bring a variety of new challenges, ranging from the entrenchment of accountable care organizations (ACOs) to the rise of managed care in the Medicaid program. Fred Bentley, managing director at the consulting firm Avalere Health, joined Rethink to talk about wh...
Jan 21, 2020•26 min
The opioid crisis has hit every part of the U.S. health care system – skilled nursing facilities included. But the state and federal regulations haven’t moved as fast as the crisis, even though more and more providers are seeing these patients come through their doors. For the Communicare Family of Companies, which is based in Ohio and has 87 SNFs in some of the most opioid-affected states, there are ways that providers can help address the needs of patients struggling with addiction and other d...
Jan 06, 2020•28 min
For the first time in 34 years, an annual report on nursing home finances found that the median operating margin for operators fell below zero. For CLA managing principal Cory Rutledge, a co-author of the report, the result wasn't exactly surprising, given the headwinds battering the skilled nursing space over the past decade. But while he acknowledges that the number doesn't look great, Rutledge sees sunnier times ahead for operators in the space — specifically those that take bold action to ad...
Nov 20, 2019•23 min
With 140 facilities, Consulate Health Care is something of an outlier in the skilled nursing world, and has seen its share of ups and downs related to its size. But after a strategic shrinking – and an overhaul to improve quality and care at the bedside – the operator is ready to grow again. CEO Chris Bryson has led the work in turning the company around. He joined Rethink to talk about how Consulate “doubled in size overnight” in 2012 and had to streamline in subsequent years, the work of impro...
Nov 11, 2019•25 min
