Comprehensive assessments are an important part of a nursing home resident’s care. In this article, we’ll define the term “comprehensive assessment,” explain what it includes, and review how it relates to nursing home abuse.
In healthcare, a comprehensive assessment is a tool used to learn about a patient’s concerns, symptoms, and overall health. Comprehensive assessments are an important first step in developing a plan to deliver a patient the best possible care.
As part of a comprehensive assessment, nurses gather thorough data about a patient’s physiological, psychological, socioeconomic, and social determinants of health, spirituality, and lifestyle. These factors are all used to determine diagnoses and build a nursing care plan with the goal of improving health outcomes.
When receiving a comprehensive health assessment, a patient can expect the following.
When a patient is admitted to a nursing home, they can expect to undergo a comprehensive assessment to determine their immediate care and support needs. These are a critical part of a nursing home resident’s care and treatment and the first step in the three-step process of keeping a nursing home patient safety, which includes:
Federal regulations require nursing homes to perform a comprehensive assessment of every resident within 14 calendar days of admission into the nursing home. It is also required within 14 days of a significant change in condition in which a resident's baseline has changed such as a loss in capacity, a fall, an injury, or the like. This is so the nursing home can put in new interventions to address this change in condition. Comprehensive assessments must also be performed at least annually.
Nursing home comprehensive assessments must be conducted and supervised by a registered nurse and are required by federal law to cover (at minimum):
As part of comprehensive assessments, nursing homes should take observations, look at medical records, and interview a resident’s family members.
A failure to perform such comprehensive assessments is illegal and may be considered to be nursing home abuse if it reduces a patient’s quality of treatment or harms them in any way. If you or a loved one have experienced nursing home abuse, it is recommended to speak to an attorney who can help you build a legal case to be compensated for your pain and suffering.
