Mitigating Risks: Proactive Vital Sign Monitoring in Senior Care Risk Management

As a senior care facility administrator or manager, there’s one thing you can always count on — risk. Things could go off the rails at any time on any day, affecting your staff, residents, or the facility as a whole. As a result, there’s a growing need for designated risk managers in these facilities.

Being proactive in vital sign monitoring is a dependable way to mitigate certain risks. The data gleaned from such an initiative can change the trajectory of your facility in a substantial way.

If you are new to senior care risk management or in-depth vital sign monitoring, this article is for you. In it, we’ll walk you through both of these concepts and some risk management protocols you can put into practice today.

Common skilled nursing facility (SNF) risks

Often, management and staff at senior care facilities are unaware of the risks associated with providing care to seniors. But, educating yourself on the risks can help you set and calibrate your risk management protocols. Here are the most common senior care facility risks:

Trips and falls

Older adults often have very weakened bodies, which makes them more prone to injuries than younger adults. For this reason, trips and falls are an ongoing risk requiring mitigation in senior care settings. Trips and falls can lead to serious injury, landing your residents in the hospital. In some cases, these accidents can even be fatal.

Staff and family members can tape down or otherwise remedy tripping hazards to mitigate this risk. They can also illuminate any dark areas of the facility and keep clutter off ramps. Lastly, they can encourage able-bodied residents to continue working out or engaging in physical activity.

Try your best to remedy any issues as soon as you discover them.

Vital sign errors

Vital signs are integral to care provision in any healthcare setting. And that’s because they reveal so much about a patient – from clinical deterioration to treatment effectiveness and anything in between. By analyzing vital sign data over time, you can also pick up on trends that necessitate sweeping changes in multiple areas.

But there’s always a risk that vitals may be improperly measured, recorded, or managed. When that happens, your facility’s care plans and interventions may not be as effective, increasing the risk of less-than-ideal patient outcomes.

Resident abuse

Abuse is way too common in nursing homes, a place where care and compassion should be paramount. According to the Nursing Home Abuse Center, 1 in 10 nursing home residents experience abuse in the United States. Some of the most common abuse types include neglect, sexual abuse, physical abuse, and emotional/psychological abuse. And it’s thought that the actual figure is much higher due to underreporting.

In Canada, nursing homes are lawfully required to take reasonable measures to protect their residents from abuse. Hundreds of facilities were found guilty of breaking this law in 2020.

Here are some ways to reduce resident abuse:

• Invest in in-depth training for any staff members who come in contact with residents.
• Be careful who you hire — do background checks, reference checks, and thorough interviews.
• Always be on the lookout for signs of abuse, including weight loss, sunken eyes, and more. Train staff on the signs of abuse so that they know how to respond to suspected abuse situations.
• Encourage staff to speak up about any concerns they may have. Anonymous reporting may encourage hesitant staff to report potential wrongdoing.

Medication errors

Yet another risk to consider when managing a senior care facility is medication errors. Errors like administering medication to the wrong patient or giving an incorrect dose can be detrimental to a resident’s health. Medication errors can cause issues like hospitalizations, organ damage, pain, psychological problems, and even death.

Here are a few ways to reduce the risk of medication errors:

• Prioritizing digital documentation workflows for medication administration.
• Having clear labels on all medication.
• Drafting and implementing a medication administration procedure.

The significance of risk mitigation cannot be overstated

Risk mitigation should be on every senior care administrator’s radar. When risks become a reality, your residents, staff, and SNF all hang in the balance. Here are a few reasons why the significance of risk mitigation cannot be overstated:

• Residents are highly vulnerable. They are often frail and sickly. Inherent risks like those mentioned earlier (trips, falls, medication errors, etc.) could easily affect their health and livelihood in awful ways. Risk mitigation techniques and protocols help to reduce these risks.
• Your reputation is on the line. Nursing homes already don’t have the best reputation these days. In fact, Americans rated nursing homes a D+ for quality of care in 2023. Moreover, widespread infections and deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic (among other things) have eroded Canadians’ trust in nursing homes. This distrust is rooted in resident accidents, neglect, and other care provision problems. Risk mitigation targets issues like these, preventing your facility from becoming the next headline.
• Ongoing compliance issues can derail any facility. A substantial portion of compliance law is centered on protecting residents from unnecessary risks. Risk management initiatives and protocols are outlined in many of the laws and guidelines. Your risk mitigation efforts can help you achieve and maintain compliance.
• Stability is hard to come by in the skilled nursing field. Problems related to staffing, low reimbursement, compliance rules, and everyday resident care can all take your facility for a loop. Risk mitigation increases stability by helping you manage the factors within your control. 

Take a proactive approach to vital sign monitoring to mitigate risks

In a simple sense, vital sign monitoring requires regular vitals measurements and documentation for later review by clinical and administrative staff. It’s a crucial nursing function that helps staff identify signs of health deterioration, illnesses, and conditions. It also helps clinicians gauge the success of treatment methods. Vitals management has saved many lives and is a cornerstone of SNF care.

Though basic vital sign monitoring supports positive resident health outcomes, it doesn’t adequately support risk mitigation. Risk mitigation demands proactive vital sign monitoring, which goes beyond the basics.

First, it requires ongoing vital sign data analysis to identify trends and outliers. A dedicated professional will examine vital signs information individually (per resident) and collectively to identify potential risks.

Consider an analysis that reveals that several residents suddenly have elevated heart rates. This could indicate a problem with the temperature or humidity level in their rooms, human error, or any number of other issues. This analysis gives the facility a chance to investigate and remedy the issue before things spiral out of control.

Having a set of eyes on the data at all times can tip you off to problems you otherwise wouldn’t have anticipated. Here are some other helpful vital sign monitoring functions:

• Training or retraining your staff to ensure they’re up to speed on vital sign monitoring. Doing so helps to cultivate your staff’s skillset, further reducing risk.
• Fostering a culture of collaboration, responsibility, and communication. Things won’t fall through the cracks so easily when your team is a unified force and everyone is held accountable.
• Getting vital sign data software on deck. We can only do so much without technology. Solutions targeted at vital sign accuracy and documentation can save you and your staff substantial time and effort. In turn, you will have more time to focus on big-picture things, and your nurses will be able to provide more direct resident care. Learn more about tech solutions for senior care facilities here.

Essential risk management protocols for senior care facilities

We’ve covered the risks associated with SNFs, the benefits of proactive vital sign monitoring, and more. Now, it’s time to get into some essential risk management protocols every senior care facility administrator can use.

Follow all risk management protocols per federal and local law

If you don’t know where to start when it comes to risk management, a good first step is to become educated in the laws governing your facility. They were designed to minimize risks to your residents and staff. If you’re not well-versed in SNF law, it may be best to enlist the help of a legal professional. Once you have a good foundation, be sure to stay abreast of further developments for compliance and risk management’s sake.

Invest in comprehensive risk management training

Risk management training isn’t just for risk managers – it’s for anyone who plays a role in your facility, including nursing staff and administrators. This training should encompass the following areas and more, depending on the types of staff in attendance:

• Risk identification and assessment
• Fall prevention techniques
• Safety in medication administration
• Resident abuse prevention
• Compliance

Look into vital sign management software

Risks related to vital sign monitoring are always looming in senior care facilities. Thankfully, vital sign monitoring software is getting increasingly sophisticated by the year. The best solutions of today are extremely helpful for any facility that is looking to supercharge its vitals monitoring efforts.

VitalLink is a top vital sign management software that helps tremendously with vital sign accuracy and reliability. It works with Bluetooth-enabled vital sign devices to enable real-time vitals data syncing and manipulation. It ensures your staff always has the information necessary to make the right decisions. Here are some of the main benefits of the software:

• No more manual vitals documentation.
• More precise vitals data.
• Quick syncing for swift interventions and care plan changes.
• Ability to add to data per your staff workflows.
• Highly secure data syncing and storage.
• Easy integration with your existing EHR system.

Learn more about VitalLink here.

So, there you have it – how to mitigate risks in your skilled nursing facility. Though there’s no way to eliminate all risks, mitigating the ones within your control is always worthwhile. And with the information in this article, you’re in a great position to do so. We wish you the best as you work to cultivate a safer, healthier environment for your residents and transform your facility for the better.