CANTON, Maine (January 22, 2019) --- Pinnacle Health & Rehab in Canton has received the national Eli Pick Facility Leadership Award (EPFLA) from the American College of Health Care Administrators (ACHCA). The award is a significant achievement --- only 7 percent of skilled nursing facilities nationwide qualify for the distinction, which honors top-performing nursing homes and their administrators.
“Our focus and mission is always on the patients and their care,” Pinnacle CEO Israel Nachfolger said. “This award is a testament to the leadership at Pinnacle and the work our administrator and staff are doing not only to enhance the quality of care, but also to improve the quality of life and health outcomes for those entrusted to us for their care.”
The Facility Leadership Award uses data-driven criteria to objectively identify high-performing skilled nursing facilities and the leaders who make them excel --- administrators like Mark Jacobs, who has run Pinnacle Health & Rehab in Canton for 20 years.
“This has been a total team effort,” Jacobs said. “I’m grateful to the men and women who work physically demanding, emotionally challenging jobs to provide around-the-clock care to some of our most vulnerable residents. We’re proud the data validate our work, but our greatest reward is in the health and safety of our residents and the comfort we provide to families.”
The award looks at Minimum Data Set (MDS) quality measures as measured by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), occupancy rates, and survey data from state and federal regulatory agencies.
Jacobs was part of a team at Pinnacle that in 2018 adopted a new telemedicine program, TapestryCare™, which is designed to help rural facilities improve and maintain CMS quality and rating measures. Pinnacle already achieves CMS’s highest rating of five stars, so adding telemedicine ensured its continued high performance.
The technology is radically changing how care is delivered, giving residents and patients bedside access to primary and specialty care services.
“Health care is evolving rapidly,” said Dr. David Chess, founder, president and chief medical officer of Tapestry Telehealth. “Tapestry Telehealth is working with partners like Pinnacle not only to keep pace, but to lead the way. And those efforts are making a difference.”
Most telemedicine programs offer only silos of care --- for wound care or psychiatry, for example. Or, they offer only “urgent care” or after-hours coverage models, focusing on one-off encounters rather than a continuous true primary care relationship. But TapestryCare™ offers a comprehensive medical team and a dedicated nurse practitioner supported by a full-scope multi-specialty medical and behavioral health group.
The primary care team, including the NP, integrates with attending physicians. Specialty services include wound care, cardiology, dermatology, endocrinology, gastroenterology, infectious disease, neurology, pain control, palliative care, pulmonology, renal-nephrology and physiatry. Patients have access to daily behavioral services, including both scheduled and 24/7 emergency mental health care and family communication and support.
Having daily virtual access to an on-site medical team helps to avoid unnecessary hospitalizations when medical conditions change, reduces the need for long, costly and uncomfortable trips outside the facilities for basic evaluations or specialty consults decreases, increases access to care by eliminating delays waiting for physician callbacks or open appointments with specialists, and improves medical outcomes,
For information about Pinnacle Health & Rehab, visit: www.pinnaclecanton.com. For information about Tapestry Telehealth’s telemedicine program, visit: www.tapestrytelehealth.com.
MEDIA CONTACTS:
Mark Jacobs, Pinnacle, 207-597-2510
Kurt Knaus, Tapestry, 717-571-5687