Improving Education and Communication in an Assisted Living Facility to Reduce Avoidable Emergency Department Transfers: A Quality Improvement Project.

The purpose of the current project was to determine the effectiveness of training and communication tools used as intervention strategies to reduce unnecessary emergency department transfers of assisted living facility (ALF) residents. Two communication protocols (SBAR and STOP and WATCH) were introduced to standardize clinical communication among licensed practical nurses (LPNs) and clinical providers. Twenty-nine LPNs working in an ALF with 172 units were recruited.