Overview

The CareMoves™ Safe Patient Handling and Movement (SPHM) Program has been designed to take into account the specific needs of the staff, patients and residents of long term care, assisted living, home health care and hospice. While the principles of making the change to a SPHM culture are similar in any environment, the equipment requirements, staff levels and skill mix, funding and reimbursement issues, cultural and environmental challenges make each of these areas unique. CareMoves™ provides a framework that includes all the necessary tools for you to implement your SPHM initiative and can provide you with any level of support you feel you need to ensure that your program is both successful and sustainable.

Long Term Care

The CareMoves™ SPHM program takes into account the specific needs of long term care including the frequent heavy lifting and repositioning of residents who may be unreliable in their mobility or combative, the cultural challenges and education needs of caregivers, the high Clinical Nurse Assistant turnover, minimal funding for equipment, and for many facilities, bathrooms and cluttered rooms that make using lifting equipment a challenge. CareMoves™ provides tools that can help you identify where you will achieve the maximum return on investment for minimum outlay with an ongoing evaluation strategy that meets the needs of ACHA, Joint Commission, Risk Management, Administration and your own quality standards.

Assisted Living

This often forgotten area in Safe Patient Handling and Movement has its own challenges. The residents are often very frail but resistant to interventions in order to maintain their independence. Reimbursement is not always easy to obtain for equipment in this 'no mans land' of neither living at home or in long term care. One of the biggest SPHM risks for staff who work in Assisted Living is helping a resident who has fallen to get up from the floor. CareMoves™ works with you to identify equipment that is unobtrusive, portable and which can be used by any professional group in line with the facility's existing protocols.

Home Health Care

The CareMoves™ SPHM program considers the primary needs of portability of equipment, reimbursement challenges, caregiver needs, lack of space for equipment maneuverability in often cluttered rooms with carpet, and storing equipment so that it does not become an intrusion into someone's home. Our HomeCare SPHM Risk Assessment Tool© helps staff to determine the most appropriate equipment for the task with our team training and education approach specifically designed to meet the needs of home health care workers in their areas of practice.

Hospice

The SPHM needs of the hospice patient who may be cared for at home or in a facility setting are many and diverse. The CareMoves™ SPHM program incorporates the relevant features from long term care, acute care and home health care to provide a program that promotes a dignified approach to moving and handling patients in their last weeks or days of life and which significantly reduces the risk of injury to the caregivers.