Is a RN Required for Your Assisted Living Business? Find Out Here!
Sep 01, 2024
This blog will answer a common question: "Do you need an RN for your assisted living business?" This is a frequently asked subject, particularly among individuals with nursing backgrounds who want to work in assisted living. Having an RN on your team might be a game changer, but is it necessary? Let's go over this in depth.
The role of a Registered Nurse (RN) in an assisted living facility can vary considerably according to the level of care provided and the regulations in your state. Operating an assisted living business entails many responsibilities, from ensuring residents' safety to adhering to state laws.
In this blog post, we'll go over the situations in which an RN is essential and when you can get by without one. We'll also talk about the advantages of having an RN on staff and how their knowledge can improve the quality of care in your facility. Whether you're just getting started or trying to improve your current operations, understanding the function of an RN will help you make informed decisions that affect the success of your assisted living business.
Check out the video too:
Why Nurses Are Interested in Assisted Living
Many nurses express interest in starting their own assisted living facilities. They often believe they can offer better care based on their experiences in the field. Nurses are well-positioned to run these facilities due to their understanding of the industry and patient needs. However, knowing that you don’t need to be a nurse to start an assisted living business is crucial.
Do You Need an RN Full-Time?
Residential assisted living and care homes do not require a full-time registered nurse, but you will require access to one. This nurse will be in charge of critical activities such as resident assessments, health standards compliance, and delegating medicine administration to caregivers. They do not need to be present full-time, but they should be ready to execute these duties on a regular basis.
Delegation and Medication Administration
Your caregivers will need to be medication certified, which is overseen by a registered nurse. This includes preparing caregivers to provide medications safely and efficiently under the nurse's supervision. The RN's licensure covers this obligation, thus they must trust and supervise the caregivers correctly.
Partnering with RNs
In my facilities, we have partnered with nurses who work 5 to 10 hours per week. They do resident assessments, review staff work, and assist with new admissions. Even larger facilities with over 30 beds frequently hire part-time nurses. This strategy not only meets regulatory standards but also keeps expenditures under control.
How to Find an RN for Your Facility
Finding the right RN can be challenging, especially if you’re managing your facility remotely. Here are some effective strategies:
- Administrators: Your facility’s administrator is a great resource. They often have local industry connections and can recommend suitable candidates.
- Other Facility Owners: Networking with other facility owners or operators can lead to referrals. This was how we found our current RN in Idaho.
- Doctors: Primary care physicians of your residents can also be a valuable source of referrals. They work closely with the population you serve and can recommend trusted nurses.
- Online Searches: Platforms like Facebook and Google can help you find nurses. Always vet candidates thoroughly to ensure they fit your facility well.
To summarize, you do need access to an RN for your assisted living business, but not necessarily a full-time one. Partnering with an RN for part-time work can be efficient and cost-effective. Remember, the right RN can significantly impact your quality of care.
Are you ready to take the next step in starting your assisted living business? Download our Business Plan Checklist here to ensure all the essentials are covered. This checklist is a vital tool for planning and will guide you through creating a successful business plan.
Need help figuring out where to start? Join the next Roadmap Challenge and build your launch plan with me.
Show full transcript 👇
Transcript
00:00:00
hey friend it's Brandon Gustafson and welcome to Assisted Living investing excited to have you here on the Channel with me today in today's video we're going to be talking about do you need an RN for your Assisted Living business if you're interested in learning more about that stick around for today's [Music] video hey friend it's Brandon gustus and I own and operate two assisted living facilities and I created this channel to help people like you learn the ins and outs of investing in assisted living
00:00:32
welcome to Assisted Living investing before we get started with the topic today which is do you need an RN to start your Assisted Living business I want to remind you to get over to the website Assisted Living investing. net I have a free underwriting calculator there you can get access to that and it's going to help you out through your investment Journey so make sure you get over to that bunch of other free resources and other goodies on the website as well now let's get into the topic for today's video do you need an
00:00:57
RN to start your Assisted Living business it's a great question something that I see people talking I actually talk to a lot of people that say Hey I'm a nurse I would love to start my own Assisted Living business what's the process looking like and I think a lot of that comes because you that are watching this that that are nurses you think to yourself I've been in these facilities I've been in these houses for a long time I see the work that they do and I could do better than any of them
00:01:24
and I think you're right I really do I think you're probably the best people to work and run these types of facilities I think you're great at it you understand the industry you understand the people and their needs and I think you are uniquely positioned to be great at running this type of a business that said you don't have to be a nurse to start this business at all uh I'm not a nurse I worked as a CNA a certified nurses assistant when I was in high school 20 years ago but I that's my
00:01:54
experience as far as nursing is concerned have a lot of background in healthcare but not necessarily with nursing but do you need to have an RN at your assisted living facility now the answer to that especially if you're doing a residential type of a facility or residential home and as assisted living or you're doing a care home you don't need to have a full-time RN there you will need to have access to an RN you need to have somebody that can come in and do Resident assessments and make
00:02:20
sure the residents are healthy that you're meeting their level of care that when you're bringing new residents in they're doing an assessment to make sure that they're a good fit and that you can serve them and hit that level of care so you do need access to a nurse for that you also need a nurse that is willing to Delegate for medit pass um so you're going to need to have all of your caregivers all of those other people at your house that are giving medications to your residents they need to get
00:02:47
delegated by a nurse by an RN that nurse will go through a process it's set out by the state on on how you go through that delegation often times they have to go through a course to get Med certified ified to be able to pass those medications and once they do that they show that they're able to do it and the nurse has trust in that caregiver to be able to do it the nurse will delegate the ability to pass medications the nurse their license is over that passing of medication so they want to make sure
00:03:20
that they are comfortable with it that they are comfortable with the people that are passing the medication and that if any issues do come up that those are reported through the administrator up to the nurse so that they can be addressed appropriately so you do need to have access to a nurse you don't have to have a full-time nurse especially in these smaller types of homes Care Homes residential assisted living homes those types of things you don't necessarily need a full-time R for our house for
00:03:48
both of our houses we partnered with nurses and they come in and on a regular basis they're usually there for 5 to 10 hours a week 1 to two days a week and they come in and they do Resident assessments they making sure that everything is good with the residents um doing a little bit of double check on the staff making sure that they're good coordinating with our administrator at the facility and also helping the administrator do new admissions for the the residents in the home even larger
00:04:17
facilities I have a buddy in Idaho who was running a a larger facility 30 plus beds and he just had a part-time nurse that was helping out and she was probably putting in about 20 hours a week there and so you don't need that full-time person an assisted living you just don't need it when you get into nursing home you do and I'll link up a video up above about a comparison that I did between assisted living and nursing homes to kind of give you a feel for what is the difference between those two
00:04:44
and why does it matter so much um that you have an RN in the senior living industry there is a need for it absolutely in Assisted Living it's much more minimal than you would see somewhere like a nursing home so make sure you watch that video to give you some guidance so the question of do do you need to have a nurse in there full-time the answer is no absolutely not uh as I just explained you don't need to have a full-time nurse there being there part-time and that's going to help you save quite a bit of money as
00:05:10
well uh our nurses probably our highest paid hourly employee the way that we have it structured which is appropriate they have that level of experience and certification and knowledge so we should be paying them more but I don't want to be paying them a full-time salary because I don't need them to be in the house now if you are a nurse and you're watching this and you want to start a house then awesome uh I think I think it's great you might be able to be the administrator or you could just pay
00:05:37
yourself a small hourly wage for the time that you're in the house and you can still work on a few other ones so there's a lot of ways unique ways that you can do this in the business and get paid and make some extra money out of it so as as a nurse if you're watching this uh I think you've got great opportunity in front of you um that you should look into a little bit more as well so the next question is how do you find that RN how do you find find that nurse to come in and work in your facility now if
00:06:03
you're like me and you are remote and you're 5 hours away from your facility and your administrator is doing all of the things I don't have the relationships there to work with a nurse I don't know the people there uh to help build that relationship so that we can get the right nurse in in place so I have to lean on other people so who are the people that I lean on number one is administrators so your administrator that's in the facility they've like been in the industry and in the location the
00:06:33
geographic location for quite a while probably know some people there is a great resource for you to try to find somebody talk to your administrator and say what nurses do you know that might be a good fit and then have them bring in the administrator we've done this several times in the past the next one would be other Facility Owners or other operators or administrators at other facilities this is how we found our current nurse in our Idaho facility my buddy who I my mentioned earlier in the
00:07:00
story his nurse um she had some capacity to bring on another small facility like ours so we had a conversation there she went met us uh we drove up there to go meet our new administrator uh but while we were there we were able to meet the new nurse as well uh she was there getting to know the administrator and make sure they were going to fit together well that came through a referral from another facility administrator and we're able to build a really good relationship with that nurse which has been great
00:07:30
another spot would be doctors so all of your residents are going to have primary care physicians that they work with pcps and they're going to be going to them and if you are taking your residence to those hospital visits or if you ever have a a doctor come and do kind of house call to work with your residents for a particular issue having conversations with those doctors is another great way because they're going to know people if they're working in this area where they're serving your
00:07:57
residents they're probably working with other Assisted Living facilities they working with a population similar to what you're working with whether it's geriatric or mental health or something else and they're probably going to be able to give you a few referral sources on where you could go and find a nurse another great way is just finding them on Facebook or Googling them uh searching for them on the Internet you're going to be able to find people that way as well I would just make sure
00:08:22
that you're vetting people referrals are always preferred it's going to make you feel a lot more comfortable with the people that you're bringing into being your home so referrals are great but always do your dual diligence make sure that you work well with that person before you move forward with any other kind of a relationship with them it's going to save you time heartache and just make your life a whole lot easier if you're able to do that so to recap what we've been talking about today
00:08:45
we've been talking about do you need an RN to start your assisted living facility your Assisted Living business you're going to need access to one absolutely um so you want to be able to do that I also talk to you a little bit about how to find those nurses and what the those nurses are doing at your facility and what you kind of could expect if you found this to be useful and helpful make sure you like the video subscribe and ring the bell as well so you get notified every time we go live
00:09:10
or put out some more of this content what I'm doing here is trying to build everything so that you can start your own Assisted Living business does residential Assisted Living sound interesting to you but you don't know how to get started at Assisted Living investing we here to help you through the process start to finish I want to thank you for watching reminder to get over to the website assist living investing. net have our free underwriting calculator there you can scroll down and get our accelerator
00:09:34
course as well and that will help you along your journey gets you on a 12we path to ownership and starting your own Assisted Living business excited to share all of these things with you thanks for watching and have a great [Music] day
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