Right now, the answer to this question is no, but rest assured that very soon that answer will change to a resounding; YES! In other words, it has never been an easy achievement to become an RCFE administrator, since the test is difficult and there is a lot of knowledge to learn, digest and remember. The State of California wants only the best Residential Care Facility managers to operate these types of facilities, as it places a high priority on the safety and well-being of the most vulnerable members of our society. It’s just that it’s about to become a lot harder than it was before to become an RCFE administrator. Let’s talk about why.
You see, after living through this CoronaVirus crisis, it quickly became apparent that our senior population was not safe, even in a California Residential Care Facility for the Elderly, a place designed to be healthy, safe, and comfortable for our aging of the population. In Kirkland, Washington, it was a nursing home that became ground zero in the state for the CoronaVirus. Several staff members and about 15 seniors have tested positive for the virus and most of those seniors did not survive.
Several California residential care facilities also had a problem, with some elderly patients also passing away at each of those facilities. The Great State of California is investigating how this could have happened, as the nurses and assistants at these facilities, as well as the highly trained staff, know exactly what to do and how to do it. They are used to specific protocols in place to prevent the spread of bacteria, viruses and disease.
What could have been done differently? What do you need to improve? These are the questions California health inspectors and investigators are asking. Once they get to the bottom of how it happened, they will come up with additional best management practices to make sure it doesn’t happen again, the next time a disease or virus spreads rapidly through our population.
It is for this reason that RCFE administrators will have to redouble their efforts, learn new rules and enforce them to prevent this from happening again. It means more instruction, more study hours, more paperwork, and therefore it will be more difficult in the future to obtain your RCFE Administrator designation from the State of California. You can certainly understand why, and we hope we have shed some light on the seriousness of this issue. Please think about it.
