Pressure Ulcer Prevention
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OUR FINDINGS
Our study was conducted in 16 nursing homes in Southern California. These facilities comprised two groups: Six of them had scores among the lowest on the MDS quality indicator (QI) "prevalence of PU," and the remaining 10 had scores among the highest on this QI. Presumably, differences in QI scores are explained by differences in the quality of care provided. Thus, low-prevalence homes supposedly provide better PU care than high-prevalence homes.
Our study disproved this assumption, however. The only difference between the two groups--and it was a small difference--is that the supposedly "bad" nursing homes were doing a better job of documenting wound characteristics and using pressure-reduction surfaces to prevent PU.
But what struck us as more important than the differences between these two groups were their similarities. All 16 nursing homes performed poorly on screening and preventing PUs, though they did better at management once a PU was present.
In the next section, we show you how to target pressure ulcer (PU) risk reassessments to residents at highest risk.
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