NJ Assisted Living Partnership Ups Quality Focus

The NJ Department of Health and Senior Services has joined with the Health Care Association of New Jersey (HCANJ) to enhance quality and consumer information about assisted living residences in New Jersey. This four-year pilot program, entitled Advanced Standing, will offer a designation by the Health Care Association of New Jersey Foundation, which verifies that an assisted living facility has satisfied all state licensing regulations and also meets quality benchmarks.

The Advanced Standing program will expand oversight of assisted living facilities and for the first time collect quality data on these facilities. It is a voluntary program that assisted living facilities choose to participate. There are 215 assisted living facilities in New Jersey. Forty HCANJ member facilities have already expressed interest in participating in the Advanced Standing program.

The reaction of the remaining 175 facilities will be interesting. Could non-participation signal disinterest in quality for residents? That would be a big consumer turn off. Then you have the 40 facilities and how they might couch participation and use it as part of their marketing efforts.

Said NY Health Commissioner Mary O'Dowd: "This program also represents a change in culture for state government--more often we are in the position of ensuring minimum standards, which are enforced with penalties and fines. But in this case, we are asking providers to go beyond the minimum--to strive for excellence and be awarded with a special designation." Interesting.

Within this pilot project, the Department would maintain full State oversight of assisted living services and facilities. It will continue to conduct complaint investigations for all facilities, but limit routine inspections to facilities without Advanced Standing. In addition, the Department will randomly conduct unannounced surveys at up to 25 percent of facilities with Advanced Standing in the first year of the project and up to 10 percent each year after to validate surveys performed through this pilot. Until the launch of this pilot, the Department was inspecting assisted living facilities every two years. So again it will be interesting to see how non-participants fare in all of this.

The Advanced Standing status will help consumers choose facilities by also providing information on programs offered at participating assisted livings. Potential residents and their families can ask to see a documentation that indicates the facility has been given an Advanced Standing status. The Department also will note on its website what facilities have the Advanced Standing designation.

So this will truly become a badge of honor and in turn become a marketing and sales advantage. As I have maintained in the past, the blurring of the health care continuum and the increased acuity levels of assisted living residents will cause increased scrutiny on quality. Providers in other states and national chains would be well served to keep an eye on The Garden State.

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@VisionsofAmerica/Joe Sohm, Getty Images