Oct. 30, 2017—Kendal Outreach, a not-for-profit Kendal subsidiary that administers the Pennsylvania Restraint Reduction Initiative, has announced that PARRI will be dissolved effective Tuesday, Oct. 31, because grant funding is no longer available to support the program.
Grant-funded beginning in 1996, PARRI served Pennsylvania for more than 20 years. PARRI was praised for providing leadership, direction, and technical support to more than 700 long-term care providers throughout the Commonwealth.
Pennsylvania saw a 97.6 percent drop in physical restraint use from 1996 to 2015. The training team provided free assistance to Pennsylvania facilities not only on physical restraint elimination, but also chemical restraint reduction, fall management, bed and side rail safety, family/staff relationships, pressure ulcer prevention and dementia care training.
PARRI’s dissolution came after the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) denied the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services’ request to extend grant funding for PARRI. The denial was based on a new CMS policy that prohibits using civil money penalties to fund long-term projects for more than three years. PARRI was funded by state grants financed by civil money penalties levied against Pennsylvania nursing homes found to be out of compliance with standards for long-term care.
Below is the text of a letter emailed Friday, Oct. 27, to more than 700 nursing homes in Pennsylvania to let them know that PARRI has been dissolved because of lack of federal and state grant funding.
Oct. 27, 2017
Dear Sir or Madam:
I am writing to notify you and your organization that the Pennsylvania Restraint Reduction Initiative (PARRI) will be dissolved effective Tuesday, Oct. 31, 2017.
Two days ago, we received a letter (dated Oct. 20) from Pennsylvania’s Department of Human Services (DHS) directing us to discontinue PARRI’s services on Oct. 31 because the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) had denied DHS’s request to extend funding for the PARRI/MAP-IT for Healthy Skin program through the end of this year. The denial was based on a new CMS policy that prohibits using civil money penalties to fund long-term projects for more than three years.
Funded by state grants financed by civil money penalties levied against Pennsylvania nursing homes, PARRI has been praised for providing leadership, direction and technical support to more than 700 long-term care providers throughout the Commonwealth. Statistics compiled by CMS indicate Pennsylvania has seen a 97.6 percent drop in physical restraint use since PARRI’s inception in 1996 as a Kendal Outreach program. Over the past 20 years, PARRI has also expanded its educational offerings to include pressure ulcer prevention and treatment, compassionate dementia care, fall prevention and promotion of safe health care environments.
Since 1996, PARRI staff have:
- Conducted hundreds of local, state and national educational training programs through a variety of methods on a wide range of topics and performed thousands of on-site consultations.
- Developed more than 40 long-term care facility training sites across the Commonwealth, which hosted hundreds of educational programs for staff, nursing home residents and their families.
- Educated over 200 nurses to become certified Wound Treatment Associates, enhancing their ability to prevent pressure ulcers and provide appropriate wound care, if necessary.
The PARRI programs offered and relationships built have assisted in improving the lives of countless nursing home residents, provided tailored programs to health care professionals and ancillary caregivers working within the field of aging, and allowed for more collaborative work across the health care continuum and regulatory agencies. We are deeply disappointed that PARRI’s role has ended so abruptly.
As of Wednesday, Nov. 1, please address questions, care issues or other concerns directly to:
Megan Boles | Human Services Program Specialist
Department of Human Services | Office of Long-Term Living
Bureau of Quality and Provider Management | Provider and Operations Management
Forum Place – 6th Floor | P.O. Box 8025 | Harrisburg, PA 17105-8025
Phone: 717-772-2570 | Fax: 717-772-0965 | RA-PWMAFACILITY@pa.gov
Sincerely,
Beverly Grove
Kendal Outreach