Paid Feeding Assistants To Get CMS Scrutiny
Posted by Patti on August 22nd, 2007 / Print This Post
The government, CMS, is going to be taking a hard look at the relatively new position of Feeding Assistants.
Nearly four years after the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services first published a final rule allowing nursing homes to use paid feeding assistants, the agency is adding to it.The new surveyor guidance on paid feeding assistants, F-Tag 373, highlights areas that inspectors should focus on during surveys, including whether assistants have completed state-approved training and whether the facility has record of it. Surveyors also are instructed to investigate whether feeding assistants are being properly supervised, and whether appropriate residents have been chosen to receive their help.
Where I work we don’t use PFA’s. At all. We have unit aides who make beds and clean up units and the like, but they don’t feed our clients because of the very different population we serve (Brain injured young adults). Most of them are fed via GTUbes anyway. Does your facility use PFA? If so are they a help? Do you think they’re trained properly and well supervised?
September 5th, 2007 at 6:17 pm
We use them. They’ve been helpful for the most part and a few have moved on to become CNA’s. Some are really lazy though, too.
Others are great.
We had one woman who sang and danced and brought the dining room to full life every breakfast and lunch hour. She was wonderful, but she didn’t want to be an aide. She stayed with us for just over a year and we miss her a lot. SHe really brightened up the residents days. She would cook them whatever they wanted too- she could go to the kitchen and fry eggs and bacon or make waffles. In her duties she was also responsible for bed making, stocking rooms, cleaning up clutters and other messes in the rooms,besides doing the DR detail.