84 Business View - December 2015
While CCI continues to stay on the cutting edge in its
use of sophisticated, healthcare management tools, it
also pays strict attention to the daily care and safety of
its many elderly, nursing-home residents. Richardson
outlines some recent additions and improvements: “We
have, for the safety of our patients, electronic, magnetic
locks on all of our outside doors so that, at night, the
nurses and the residents and their families are secure
against any outside intruders that may try to get into the
facility. It also secures the building so that anybody who
might have dementia will not exit the building without
having somebody knowing about it. We have installed
cameras in all of our common areas so that we’re able to
monitor any problems or actions that might be unintend-
ed or have consequences that we need to know about.
Also, if the patient’s family would feel better about install-
ing a camera in the patient’s room, so that they’re able to
monitor what goes on in the room, we allow that. Those
are some of the things we’ve done to improve what we’re
doing in our facilities.”
In all these ways – medical, technological, and personal -
Richardson and the entire CCI teamare laying the ground-
work for even more profound changes they foresee com-
ing in the healthcare landscape. “We’re spending a lot
of money on capital improvements and upgrades and
people and technology to prepare for the future. We’re
positioning ourselves to take advantage of the change
that’s going on from the ACA (Affordable Care Act),” ex-
plains Richardson. “I heard a consultant say about a year
ago, that we’ll see more change in the next five years
than we’ve seen in the last fifty years, in healthcare. So,
we’re preparing ourselves to deal with those changes
ahead of time.”
What does one of those changes look like? Richardson
elaborates: “Most of us want to be taken care of in our
homes, so what we’re trying to do is position ourselves
to go outside of the nursing homes to transition on these
short-stay patients as they go home. We’re developing,
through our nurse practitioner company and our technol-
ogy company, the ability to follow these people home and
to keep them from having to come back into the nursing
home, because we’ll be able to take care of them where
they reside. And then, if they do get so sick that the only
alternative is a nursing home, they will have a connec-
HEALTHCARE
