Call for improvements in aged care
Earlier this year, the Biden administration announced a focus on overhauling the nation’s nursing home system, and LeadingAge has met with federal leaders to share members’ experiences.
LeadingAge called for a three-pronged, statewide approach to nursing home improvement: addressing the urgent workforce crisis, funding quality care, and implementing evidence-based quality improvement and measurement.
With the right technologies, funding, and support, health IT can significantly help in all of these areas. It was exciting to see “health information technology adoption in all nursing homes” as a goal in the NASEM report, with recommendations focused on electronic health record interoperability, certification criteria, adoption incentives, power training workshops and evaluation studies.
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To support this goal, the report advised the following:
- The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) should identify a pathway to provide financial incentives to nursing homes for adopting interoperability-certified EHRs that support exchanges of health information to improve person- focused longitudinal care. These incentives should parallel the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act incentives for hospitals and eligible professionals.
- The US Department of Health and Human Services should develop a way to measure and report on short-term health IT adoption and interoperability in nursing homes, consistent with other health care organizations. It must report annual results on nursing home staff, resident and family perceptions of health IT usability to Care Compare.
- CMS and the Health Resources and Services Administration should provide financial support to develop and implement ongoing workforce training emphasizing core health IT competencies for nursing home leadership and staff, such as clinical decision support , telehealth, clinical process integration, interoperability and knowledge management in patient care.
- ONC and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality should fund rigorous studies in the near term to explore the use of health IT in improving nursing home resident outcomes; disparities in the adoption and use of health IT across nursing homes; innovative health IT applications for resident care; and physician, resident, and family perceptions of health IT usability.
Finally, the report calls for more short-term and long-term funding for research in this area.
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The need for interoperability in aged care IT
Certainly these recommendations sound familiar to long-term and post-acute care providers, especially those who follow LeadingAge and its Center for Aging Services Technologies. Leadership Era Priorities and CAST initiatives have advocated for years to improve health IT in nursing homes and beyond.
However, I must emphasize that the lack of interoperability and the negative consequences it has on the quality of care are not unique to nursing homes. The need for interoperability verification and certification, health IT workforce training, and financial incentives resonates throughout the aging services sector. In fact, a recent survey of Comprehensive Elderly Care Program providers found that EHR interoperability is a major concern.
Federal attention to these issues in aging services is critical, and the time for immediate action is now. Our advocacy efforts in the LeadingAge Aging Services Workforce Now campaign support NASEM’s recommendations to bring interoperability and sharing of health information to long-term and post-acute care providers so we can provide care and services to older adults, who deserve better access to their health information, better care and better outcomes.
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