Pinecrest Manor Pioneers New Nurse Navigator Program
Pinecrest Manor at Penn Highlands Elk is pleased to welcome Lu Ann Mabie, CRNP to its clinical team. A nurse practitioner, Lu Ann will see residents at the skilled nursing facility, located in St. Marys.
This is a new position, which was made possible through a grant from the Stackpole-Hall Foundation. David Wolfe, administrator at Pinecrest Manor explained, “Currently all long-term care facilities have a medical director who makes rounds on many or all of the residents at the facility. Many of these physicians also make rounds on patients in the hospitals, in addition to seeing patients in their offices. The case load becomes overwhelming.”
That is why Pinecrest Manor is pioneering the nurse practitioner program. Lu Ann will collaborate with the physicians and oversee the residents’ care on a daily basis. She will help with charting and the development of clinical protocols. Lu Ann will also be a liaison to the hospital staff and serve on teams, such as the Palliative Care Team.
“It is our plan to demonstrate the value of the nurse practitioner role in long-term care and expand this role to other facilities in our eight-county service area under the direction of one or two medical directors,” explained Rose Campbell, president at Penn Highlands Elk. “We want to create a model that will be adopted by other skilled nursing facilities in the future.”
Lu Ann has been a registered nurse since 1994, when she graduated from the nursing program at the University of Pittsburgh in Bradford, PA. In December of that year, she began working in DuBois. She has worked in intensive care and cardiovascular intensive care.
In 2006, Lu Ann went on to receive a bachelor’s degree in nursing and then a master’s and post-master’s degree in 2012 from Clarion and Edinboro Universities. In August of that year, she became board certified and received her Family Nurse Practitioner Certificate.
Until her appointment at Pinecrest Manor, Lu Ann saw outpatients at Penn Highlands Family Medicine in DuBois, alongside Dr. Gregory Austin and Dr. Mark Maloney.