A press release issued today by the Tennessee Department of Health states that the Office of Health Care Facilities has secured a CMP grant totaling more than $370,000 to provide training for 749 people including nursing home direct care staff members, state surveyors and managers, State Long-Term Care Ombudsmen and members of the Tennessee Advancing Excellence Coalition. This training will feature leading person-directed care advocates Dr. Bill Thomas, Dr. Al Power, and Dr. Kort Nygard. This is the biggest CMP grant made by CMS Region 4 this year. This is also the biggest single training engagement in the history of The Eden Alternative.
“We are very excited to be working with the State of Tennessee to bring this training to the various stakeholders across the state. We have seen increasing interest in our dementia offerings due to the CMS and AHCA quality initiatives focused on reducing the use of psychotropic drugs. This is a chance to deliver this training on a very large scale to help the State of Tennessee to broadly address this challenging issue. We are hopeful that other states will follow Tennessee’s lead on this,” said Chris Perna, CEO of The Eden Alternative.
The first training is currently underway in Nashville. There will be additional trainings scheduled for Memphis and Knoxville for early 2013. More information can be found on the Eden Alternative website.
