Award is First Health Resources and Services Administration Grant for Hospital

ATLANTA (September 17, 2009) – Piedmont Hospital has received a three-year, $450,000 federal grant that will enable it to expand its successful geriatric education and training program for acute care nurses. Training now will be available to acute care nurses at its three sister Piedmont Healthcare hospitals, emergency department nurses at all four hospitals as well as long-term care and rehabilitation facility nurses outside the Piedmont organization.

The grant from the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services’ Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) is the first HRSA grant ever received by Piedmont. It will fund the Piedmont Healthcare Geriatric Education and Training Program expansion at Piedmont Hospital, a 481-bed hospital in Buckhead; Piedmont Fayette Hospital, a 143-bed acute-care community hospital in Fayetteville; Piedmont Mountainside Hospital, a 42-bed community hospital in Jasper; and Piedmont Newnan Hospital, a 143-bed, acute-care community hospital in Newnan.

“Piedmont Hospital is proud to receive this recognition of our excellence in geriatric education and training and support of our commitment to patients of all ages,” said Robert W. Maynard, president and CEO of Piedmont Hospital. “While the program’s target audience includes acute care, emergency department and long-term care and rehabilitation nurses, those who will ultimately benefit from this program are older patients throughout the metro Atlanta area.”

To date, the geriatric education and training program has trained 108 acute care nurses at Piedmont Hospital as geriatric resource nurses. Program leaders estimate that 240 registered nurses will be trained in geriatric-specific care during the three-year grant period. Based on current patient loads at PHC facilities and on population growth predictors, it is estimated that this training program will impact at least 84,000 older patients. 

The Piedmont Healthcare Geriatric Education and Training Program follows the Healthy People 2010 goal of improving access to quality geriatric care across the healthcare continuum and builds on the successful replication of the Hartford Institute’s NICHE (Nurses Improving Care for Healthsystem Elders) training program introduced by Piedmont’s Sixty Plus Older Adult Services Program in 2005.