the role of the health and wellness director

The Role of the

by monica wilson

During FSLA’s annual conference this past summer, I had the privilege of facilitating a session to talk about the Role of the Health and Wellness Director with four amazing leaders.* Here are my top takeaways from what they shared.

Senior Living continues to experience critical staffing shortages and companies are struggling to recruit and retain nurses. Companies are analyzing what tasks their Health and Wellness Directors (HWD) are doing, increasing support to their HWDs and taking steps to free up their HWDs to focus on clinical issues.

“Setting up transportation and appointments doesn’t require a license.”

Companies are taking nonclinical responsibilities off the HWDs, redistributing and sharing responsibilities for being on-call, and identifying ways that operational staff can better support clinical staff.

With ongoing staffing challenges and acuity levels of residents moving into assisted living continuing to increase, involving the HWD in decisions about whether their staff can take care of residents seeking admission is more necessary than ever. Executive Directors need to trust and heed HWDs’ determinations about whether the caregiving staff can safely take care of potential residents. Sales and operations staff should qualify residents before the HWD gets involved. Ensuring sales staff know the regulations and how to review a health assessment and pre-qualify potential residents both financially and functionally can reduce HWDs spending time unnecessarily evaluating residents who will not qualify for admission.

HWDs and nurses working in assisted living are pulled in many directions, covering shifts, passing medications and filling in where needed. For most HWDs, there is never enough time in a day.

“We serve in the dining room.We plunge toilets.”

Health and Wellness Directors ought to become comfortable delegating tasks like basic charting to unlicensed staff so they can spend time being a nurse and a clinician. Executive Directors can complete evaluations for appropriateness of admission, participate in care planning meetings and help with staff hiring and scheduling. In some companies, Executive Directors are doing more of these tasks on a routine basis.

To help with retention, companies must establish realistic expectations about the role with applicants and provide adequate training. Ensuring that unlicensed staff are well trained in assisting with medications and basic documentation should also be a focus. The role of HWD is an all-encompassing position, and an increasingly important one. Companies need to make the role of HWD more attractive to the pool of nurses out there and set the HWD up for success on day one.

* Elaina Couming RN, BSN, Regional Health Care Director, Legend Senior Living; Lorrie Kovac, RN, BSN, VP of Clinical Services, Sonata Senior Living; Julie Fernandez, CALA, CADDCT, CDP, CPT, Director of Team Development & Training, Sonata Senior Living; Susan Tomalia, LPN, Divisional Director of Health and Wellness, Senior Lifestyle Corporation

monica wilson, ms

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