KDADS held a monthly stakeholder meeting with representatives of LeadingAge Kansas, Kansas Health Care Association, Kansas Adult Care Executives, Kansas Hospital Association and the Long Term Care Ombudsman. The following information was shared:
- Surveys on the new Emergency Preparedness regulations will be conducted by the State Fire Marshal alongside life safety code inspections.
- Dawne Stevenson is the new CARE program manager. Prior to this position, Dawne worked at Brighton Place West in Topeka, and is a former nursing home surveyor.
- There are currently 22 open positions for nursing home surveyors across the state.
- There is still additional money in the state’s civil monetary penalty fund, which may be awarded as grants for nursing home quality improvement projects. Additional information on applying for a grant has been posted to the KDADS website.
- CARE program update
- The recent workgroup will become an ongoing advisory group
- New policies and forms created by the workgroup are under review with KDADS legal before publication
- The backlog in CARE processing has been reduced considerably
- Working on revising training videos to be more helpful
- Exploring ways to speed up the Level II process
- Fall surveyor roundtables are being planned for the second week of November.
