(Australia-NewsWire.Com, April 13, 2013 ) Sydney, Australia -- Nick Heywood-Smith, CEO of W&L Australia, reveals in a recent interview how aged care facilities can optimally utilise their dieticians for patient care and funding accreditation.
“Most aged care facilities are thousands of dollars for their site menu assessments and their residents are on supplements that are unnecessary. These facilities also have a hard time hiring dieticians who specialise in aged care,” said Nick Heywood-Smith.
“Did you know that dietitians can be used to give resident consultations, malnutrition screening, review kitchen nutrition procedures, provide practical ideas for nutritious food and snacks, update the ideal weight range for all residents, audit the weight trend of the facility, provide regular reports based on findings and recommendations for management use, and create menu assessments and nutritional management reports? There’s a lot of use you can get out of a qualified dietician,” he continued.
According to Nick Heywood-Smith, dieticians can give initial assessments and interventions, as well as ongoing reviews of resident’s nutrition.
In addition, dieticians from W&L Australia are specially trained to help aged care facilities implement processes to screen for malnutrition and provide data for quality management.
When asked how aged care facilities can use their dieticians to improve residents’ health outcomes using dietary interventions while helping with accreditation requirements for funding, Heywood-Smith replied:
“In order to do that, you need to make sure that your dieticians have aged care experience, understand your accreditation needs, be able to provide emergency visits, and recommend review dates so you can comply with accreditation requirements.”
“In addition, dieticians who would greatly improve residents’ health using nutrition and optimise fulfillments for the facilities’ accreditation requirements would also need to have a documentation system designed for maximising ACFI funding, and be cost effective by tracking dietetics usages and recommending cost reduction strategies,” he continued.
W&L Australia provides well trained dieticians who can help facilities improve residents’ health outcomes as well as meet their accreditation requirements.