New Nationwide Initiative to Fight COVID-19 Infection in Nursing Homes

We’re joining a nationwide training program to help keep COVID-19 from spreading in area nursing homes and to prepare and equip staff so that they can better protect residents and themselves. This is an essential nationwide initiative in the fight against COVID-19.

The program is part of the National Nursing Home COVID-19 Action Network supported by the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) in collaboration with the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) and Project ECHO. JSI has partnered with Dartmouth-Hitchcock and the NH Citizens Health Initiative at the UNH Institute for Health Policy and Practice, as an official Training Center for nursing homes.

This program has six goals:

• Keep the virus from entering nursing homes.
• Find out early if residents and staff have been infected.
• Prevent the spread of the virus to staff, residents, and visitors.
• Provide safe and appropriate care to residents with mild and asymptomatic cases.
• Ensure staff have the knowledge, skills, and confidence to implement best-practice safety measures to protect residents and themselves.
• Reduce social isolation for residents, families, and staff.

To do this, the Network embraces an “all teach, all learn” philosophy in which participants both receive education in best practices from renowned experts and learn from their peers. We will lead 16 virtual learning sessions with nursing home teams in simultaneous cohorts. Each Network session is designed to be interactive—to hear from nursing home staff about the challenges they are facing and provide practical solutions. During each session, nursing home staff will discuss real cases of front-line problems with both experts and their peers. In this way, staff have a chance to share best practices and learn from their peers while benefiting from the guidance of nursing home and quality improvement experts. Each session will include a brief lecture or lesson paired with case presentations and discussion, followed by a Q&A forum.

We are committed to strengthening health systems during this pandemic and are proud to be participating in improving the safety of nursing homes through the Nursing Home COVID-19 Network.