NEWS BRIEFS
NEWS BRIEFS
Generational expert predicts empty beds
As health care facilities continue to grow nationwide, generational expert Ken Gronbach, president and CEO of KGA Advertising in Middletown, CT, is warning developers to rethink their marketing and building strategies. According to Gronbach, shifts in population and generational attitudes will have a negative impact on health care facility admissions in the near future.
Contending with marketers who are gearing up for an aging boomer population, he argues these facilities will soon find themselves desperate to fill their beds. Based on documented statistics, generational demographic profiles, and analysis, he forecasts a drop in the need for health care facilities for the near future.
According to census figures, Gronbach explains, the population swells and ebbs every 20 years. The group that is now over 70 years old, known as the GI generation, comprised a peak in the population. Recently, the GI generation has dramatically dwindled to 20 million. Developers are eyeing the next population wave: the baby boomers, who are now approximately 35 to 50 years old and number 80 million.
What they don’t realize, he warns, is that in between the GI generation and the boomers is a massive dip in population. This dip, known as the silent generation, ages 51 to 70, makes up this bottom of the population wave and numbers only 30 million. This generation is too small to fill all the facilities currently undergoing construction. And that means empty beds.
MHA launches home care indicators
The Association of Maryland Hospitals and Health Systems’ Quality Indicator (QI) Project is launching a new set of performance measurement indicators designed to help home care organizations assess and improve the quality of care they provide.
Established in 1985, the QI Project is one of the oldest and largest comparative clinical databases in the United States with more than 1,500 health care organizations participating. "Our new home care indicator set extends our proven performance measurement methodology to a vital segment of the health care market," says David Mangler, managing director of the QI Project.
The 24 measures in the indicator set address four areas of performance that are critical to the provision of high-quality home care services: unscheduled transfers to inpatient acute care, use of emergent care services, discharges to nursing home care, and acquired infections. The indicator set has been named by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations to its list of measures for the ORYX Initiative.
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