One of the highlights of the AAPACN annual conference each year is the recognition of the year’s award winners. With the 2020 conference now planned as a virtual conference in June, AAPACN will feature the 2020 winners in this blog series every week in April. Please join AAPACN in congratulating each of the AAPACN 2020 Award Winners!
AAPACN 2020 Influential Award – Tracey Robinson, RAC-CT
The Influential Award recognizes a member who advocates for or affects change within his or her facility or in the LTPAC field.
Tracey is a clinical reimbursement supervisor for Sholom in St. Paul, MN. In her application, she shared her story.
I started in long term care as a 16-year-old nursing assistant, and I feel so fortunate to have had the ability to immediately recognize my passion so early in life! In my past 30 years as a nurse in both long-term care and post-acute care settings, I truly feel that I have made, and will continue to make, a difference.
Prior to my current position, I was an MDS Coordinator for 10 years. As reimbursement slowly started moving towards a quality base, my excitement really started to grow! I have always felt that reimbursement should be based on quality of care, and the attention was finally shifting to where it needed to be. For the past several years, I have become a (self-proclaimed) expert in all of the SNF quality programs at both state and federal levels, and I have used this knowledge to help our staff understand the programs and improve quality in so many important areas.
Results of this education for our facilities include drastically reducing re-hospitalizations, falls, injuries, skin alterations, and pain. It has also significantly increased areas of functioning and mobility for our residents. Although these are all things that skilled nursing facilities were looking at in the past, the reality is that the reimbursement-based measures have brought quality into a new spotlight. There have been significant, amazing transformations in our facilities over the past few years. Patient and resident quality of care now has the attention of many more individuals within a corporation, more than it ever had before.
Our MDS departments no longer feel like a separate entity, and our therapy departments no longer feel like they must drive the bus. The result has been interdisciplinary team collaboration, creating the best possible outcomes for our residents. That is the reason why I show up every day, ready to improve and enrich the lives of our elders.
Congratulations, Tracey, AAPACN 2020 Influential Award winner!
congrats!
Congratulations , for being a Shining Star during these unprecedented times . Thanks for “ understanding the big picture of quality of care “.