NCSLA Continuing Education Resources

Third Party Risk Transfer: Protecting Your Facility Beyond Your Own Insurance Program

Amy Cranford Perkins, President & CEO, The Cranford Agency

This presentation, presented by Amy Cranford Perkins of The Cranford Agency, explains how assisted living facilities can protect themselves from liability risks associated with outside vendors, contractors, and service providers. It emphasizes the importance of having strong contracts, verifying insurance coverage, and ensuring vendors accept appropriate responsibility for risks created by their work.

The main takeaway is that a vendor’s mistake can become the facility’s liability. Facilities should establish a consistent process for reviewing contracts, verifying insurance coverage, tracking expiration dates, and ensuring appropriate protections are in place before vendors begin work. These steps help protect residents, employees, property, and the organization while reducing the potential for costly claims.

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Partners in Care, Protected in Practice: Managing Third-Party Vendors and Reducing Liability

Risk Management When Working with Contractors

Christy C. Dunn, Young Moore and Henderson, P.A.

This presentation focuses on how assisted living facilities can reduce legal liability and manage risks when working with third-party vendors and independent contractors. Although facilities may hire outside companies to provide services, the facility remains responsible for resident care, regulatory compliance, and maintaining a safe environment.

The most important message is that hiring a vendor does not transfer the facility's responsibility for resident safety or regulatory compliance. Even when a contractor performs the work, the facility may still face citations, penalties, lawsuits, or reputational damage.

Administrators should regularly review vendor contracts, verify insurance coverage, ensure appropriate confidentiality and indemnification provisions are in place, document incidents, and maintain accurate records. Legal counsel should review contracts and advise on specific liability concerns.

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Making Sense of Dementia: What Is It Like, and What Do We Do?

Loy Anne Campbell, MS, OTR/L

This presentation explains how dementia affects the brain and how caregivers can better support individuals experiencing cognitive changes. Dementia is an umbrella term for conditions that cause chronic, progressive changes in brain function. These changes can affect memory, decision-making, vision, language, movement, and sensory processing.

The presentation emphasizes that caregivers should focus on understanding the person's experience, communicating with kindness, and adapting their approach to meet the individual's changing needs.

The most important lesson is that dementia changes how a person experiences and responds to the world, so caregivers must adapt their approach rather than expect the person to respond as they once did. Staff should communicate calmly, give simple instructions, use visual cues, validate emotions, maintain a safe environment, and provide respectful assistance with daily activities. Understanding these changes can help reduce frustration, improve communication, and support residents' dignity and quality of life.

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From Move-In to Med Pass: Automation Across the Resident Journey

Loren Odom, National Consultant, ECP

This presentation focuses on how adult care homes can improve resident care, documentation, and regulatory compliance by connecting their admission, care planning, and medication management systems. Manual paperwork and disconnected systems can lead to missed deadlines, incomplete records, communication breakdowns, and documentation errors that may result in citations during inspections by the Division of Health Service Regulation (DHSR).

The presentation emphasizes that because inspections are unannounced, facilities must maintain accurate, complete, and up-to-date records every day rather than preparing only when a survey is expected.The primary message is that survey readiness is an everyday responsibility, not something to prepare for only when an inspection is expected.

Administrators should regularly review admission records, verify assessment and care plan deadlines, ensure care instructions reach frontline staff, and confirm that MARs match current medication orders. Reviewing documentation processes and reducing communication gaps can help prevent errors, strengthen compliance, and allow staff to spend more time providing direct resident care.

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Fire Safety & Emergency Preparedness for N.C. Adult Care Homes and Family Care Homes

Stacy Massey, NCSLA CEO

This presentation reviews fire safety and emergency preparedness requirements for licensed adult care homes and family care homes in North Carolina, with an emphasis on regulatory compliance, staff training, documentation, and emergency response. The updated rules emphasize that facilities must maintain an ongoing emergency preparedness program, not simply have a posted evacuation plan and completed fire-drill logs.

Administrators are responsible for ensuring that emergency plans are current, accessible to staff, practiced regularly, and designed to protect residents while maintaining essential care and services during emergencies. Administrators should regularly review their emergency preparedness and fire evacuation plans, verify emergency contacts and supplies, ensure posted evacuation diagrams are approved and visible, maintain required drill and training records, and make sure staff understand their responsibilities. Plans should be updated whenever resident needs, staffing, facility operations, or local guidance changes.

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