Applying Agile Methodology to Reengineer the Delivery of Person-Centered Care in a Nursing Home: A Case Study.

Nursing home (NH) providers would benefit from adopting evidence-based measures for gathering and utilizing resident preference information in their daily care activities. However, providers face barriers when implementing assessment tools used to promote person-centered care (PCC). Although Agile methodology is not commonly used in NH settings, this case study shows how it can be used to achieve the goal of delivering preference-based, PCC, within a large NH. We present a road map for breaking down care processes, prioritizing, and implementing iterative plan, do, study, act cycles using Agile methodology to enhance group collaboration on quality improvement cycles, to achieve our goal of providing preference-based PCC. We first determined if care plans reflected each resident's important preferences, developed a method for tracking whether residents attended activities that matched their preferences, and determined if residents were satisfied that their preferences were being met. These efforts had positive effects throughout the NH particularly when COVID-19 limited visitors and significantly modified staff workflow. Specifically, Agile processes helped staff to know how to honor preferences during quarantines which necessitated a shift to individualized (and not group) approaches for meeting preferences for social contact, comfort, and belonging. The ready availability of preference-based reporting was critical to quickly informing new staff on how to meet residents' most important preferences. Based on lessons learned, we describe a developmental approach that other providers can consider for adoption. Implications of this work are discussed in terms of the need for provider training in Agile methodologies to support iterative improvements, the need for policies that reimburse providers for their efforts, and additional research around workflow processes.

Mapping Core Concepts of Person-Centered Care in Long-Term Services and Supports.

Person-centered care (PCC) has a wide range of definitions, most based on expert opinion rather than empirical analysis. The current study used an empirical concept mapping approach to identify core components of PCC used in long-term services and supports (LTSS). The aim is to help providers and researchers develop a unified set of domains that can be used to assess and improve the quality of PCC in real-world settings. Results yielded six domains describing essential elements of PCC in LTSS: Enacting Humanistic Values, Direct Care Worker Values, Engagement Facilitators, Living Environment, Communication, and Supportive Systems; and two underlying dimensions: Intrapersonal Activities and Extrapersonal Services and Social and Physical Environment. Nurses can use the results to enhance clinical knowledge and skills around delivery of PCC. Researchers can use the results to build a comprehensive and unified measure to accelerate adoption of PCC practices shown to benefit older adults, families, and the LTSS workforce. [Journal of Gerontological Nursing, 45(2), 6-13.].

A randomized controlled trial for an individualized positive psychosocial intervention for the affective and behavioral symptoms of dementia in nursing home residents.

OBJECTIVES: This randomized controlled study tested the effectiveness of individualized activities, led by certified nursing assistants (CNAs), to increase positive and reduce negative affect and behavior among nursing home residents with dementia. METHOD: Nursing home residents with mild to advanced dementia (N = 180) were randomly assigned to usual care (UC, n = 93) or 1 of 2 experimental conditions. Residents in the attention control group (AC, N = 43) participated in standardized one-to-one activities with their CNAs. Individualized Positive Psychosocial Intervention (IPPI) participants (n = 44) received a CNA-led activity matched to their interests and ability. Outcomes were residents' positive and negative affect and verbal and nonverbal behavior. RESULTS: The IPPI and AC groups experienced similar benefits-more pleasure, alertness, engagement, positive touch, and positive verbal behavior-compared with UC. The AC group displayed more anger, uncooperativeness, and very negative verbal behavior than UC or IPPI. DISCUSSION: This study demonstrates the value of individualized activities for nursing home residents with dementia. In a stringent test, residents were happier and less angry during a customized intervention compared with a standardized intervention. Even brief individualized CNA-led activities bring pleasure to nursing home residents and constitute an effective strategy to enhance positive affect and engagement in persons with dementia.

The consistency of self-reported preferences for everyday living: implications for person-centered care delivery.

Preferences are the expression of an individual's basic psychosocial needs and are related to care outcomes. The current study tested the consistency of 87 individuals' everyday preferences over 1 week, comparing responses of nursing home residents (n = 37; mean age = 82) and university students (n = 50; mean age = 20). Participants completed the Preferences for Everyday Living Inventory at baseline and 5 to 7 days later. Preference consistency was calculated three ways: (a) correlations (range = 0.11 to 0.90); (b) overall percent of exact agreement (e.g., response was "very important" at both time points) (66.1%); and (c) responses collapsed as "important" or "not important" (increase in percent agreement to 86.6%). Personal care preferences were more stable, whereas leisure activities were less stable. The groups did not have significant differences in consistency. Some preferences are more consistent than others; age and frailty do not appear to be related to preference instability.

New toolkit to measure quality of person-centered care: development and pilot evaluation with nursing home communities.

BACKGROUND: Increasingly, nursing home (NH) providers are adopting a person-centered care (PCC) philosophy; yet, they currently lack methods to measure their progress toward this goal. Few PCC tools meet criteria for ease of use and feasibility in NHs. The purpose of this article is to report on the development of the concept and measurement of preference congruence among NH residents (phase 1), its refinement into a set of quality indicators by Advancing Excellence in America's Nursing Homes (phase 2), and its pilot evaluation in a sample of 12 early adopting NHs prior to national rollout (phase 3). The recommended toolkit for providers to use to measure PCC consists of (1) interview materials for 16 personal care and activity preferences from Minimum Data Set 3.0, plus follow-up questions that ask residents how satisfied they are with fulfillment of important preferences; and (2) an easy to use Excel spreadsheet that calculates graphic displays of quality measures of preference congruence and care conference attendance for an individual, household or NH. Twelve NHs interviewed residents (N = 146) using the toolkit; 10 also completed a follow-up survey and 9 took part in an interview evaluating their experience. RESULTS: NH staff gave strong positive ratings to the toolkit. All would recommend it to other NHs. Staff reported that the toolkit helped them identify opportunities to improve PCC (100%), and found that the Excel tool was comprehensive (100%), easy to use (90%), and provided high quality information (100%). Providers anticipated using the toolkit to strengthen staff training as well as to enhance care planning, programming and quality improvement. CONCLUSIONS: The no-cost PCC toolkit provides a new means to measure the quality of PCC delivery. As of February 2014, over 700 nursing homes have selected the Advancing Excellence in America's Nursing Homes PCC goal as a focus for quality improvement. The toolkit enables providers to incorporate quality improvement by moving beyond anecdote, and advancing more systematically toward honoring resident preferences.

The preferences for everyday living inventory: scale development and description of psychosocial preferences responses in community-dwelling elders.

PURPOSE OF THE STUDY: Assessing preferences for daily life is the foundation for person-centered care delivery. This study tested a new measure, the Preferences for Everyday Living Inventory (PELI), with a large sample of community-dwelling older adults. We sought to evaluate the tool's convergent and divergent validity, identify the most commonly held preferences within the sample, and explore relationships between gender and race and strength of preferences. DESIGN AND METHODS: Randomly selected African American and Caucasian home health agency clients (N = 437) were interviewed using the PELI. Respondents self-reported functional ability, physical health, affect, mental health, and five domains of psychosocial preferences. The study examined correlations among descriptive variables and preference items and used logistic regression to estimate relationships between gender and race and 55 PELI items and 10 descriptive covariates. RESULTS: The study found support for the PELI's construct validity, identified seniors' most strongly held preferences across domains, and revealed significant differences in preferences by gender and race. IMPLICATIONS: The PELI captures strongly held personal preferences and shows promise as a practical tool that allows providers to document client preferences and customize care accordingly.