Formative Evaluation of a Workforce Investment Organization to Provide Scaled Training for Home Health Aides Serving Managed Long-Term Care Plan Clients in New York State.

As part of its Medicaid program restructuring, New York State funded 11 Workforce Investment Organizations (WIO) to support training initiatives for the long-term care workforce. Focusing on one WIO, this formative evaluation examined quality improvement training programs delivered to 11,163 Home Health Aides employed by home care agencies serving clients of Managed Long-Term Care plans. Results are presented from a thematic analysis of qualitative interviews with organizational and program stakeholders examining contextual factors influencing program objectives, implementation, barriers and facilitators, and perceived outcomes. Findings suggested that WIO training programs were implemented during a period of shifting organizational strategies alongside value-based payment reforms and challenges to aide recruitment and retention. Stakeholders appraised WIO training programs positively and valued program flexibility and facilitation of communication and collaboration between agencies and plans. However, delivery and implementation challenges existed, and industry-wide structural fragmentation led stakeholders to question the WIO's larger impact.

Using Root Cause Analysis to Inform a Falls Practice Change in the Home Care Setting.

Falls are a significant health problem in community-dwelling older adults, resulting in injuries, deaths, and increased healthcare costs. Falls were a quality concern for a Northeastern home care agency and this project aimed to evaluate the falls prevention process for older adults receiving home care services by determining potential root causes of falls and to identify a practice change. This quality improvement project used a root cause analysis methodology with a retrospective matched case-control design. Records of patients with falls were assessed for falls prevention process fidelity and compared with patients without a fall matched on the Missouri Alliance for Home Care-10 (MAHC-10) assessment, examining plan of care accuracy and patient fall risk factors. Findings indicated fidelity concerns in the fall prevention process, with gaps in care planning aligned with identified risk factors. Interventions to mitigate identified MAHC-10 risk factors on care plans were present less than 50% of the time for four of the six factors. Polypharmacy (7.46%) and pain affecting function (9.21%) were most frequently unaddressed risk factors in the care plan. Recommendations included implementation of a falls prevention pathway, including standardized falls risk assessment, universal falls precautions in the care plan with tailored interventions based on risk factors, and referral initiation when necessary.

Medicaid long-term care workforce training intervention and value-based payment metrics.

OBJECTIVE: To examine the impact of a scaled implementation of workforce training intervention on value-based payment measures in a large home-based Medicaid managed long-term care plan population in New York. DATA SOURCES: Managed long-term care clients' health assessments from the Uniform Assessment System of New York merged with paid claims, home health aide operational visit data, and workforce training rosters between 2018 and early-2020. STUDY DESIGN: A quasi-experimental design was used. Exposure and control groups were constructed using the proportion of service hours delivered by trained aides between clients' baseline and follow-up/outcome assessments. Multivariate logistic generalized linear and additive models were estimated to examine associations between exposure to trained aides and value-based payment measures. DATA COLLECTION/EXTRACTION METHODS: The analytic sample consisted of 19,212 pairs of assessments from 13,320 long-term care clients continuously enrolled in the plan between baseline and follow-up/outcome assessments. Matched assessment pairs were 6-10 months apart. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Over 27% of the study population (n = 3656 clients) received services from one or more of 8683 trained aides. Statistically significant associations were observed for four of seven value-based payment measures; however, the presence and magnitudes of positive training effects differed by client service needs. With covariate adjustment, workforce training had the largest estimated positive impacts on rates of flu vaccination among average-need clients (1.60%, standard error [SE] = 0.01), not experiencing uncontrolled pain among above-average-need clients (0.69%, SE = 0.001), stable/improved pain intensity among heavy-need clients (1.25%, SE = 0.01), and stable/improved shortness of breath among light-need clients (0.88%, SE = 0.003). CONCLUSION: Although we found mixed associations between scaled workforce training implementation and value-based payment metrics, we noted workforce training could benefit high-need long-term care recipients. Health indicators more sensitive to the daily support provided by direct care workers should be integrated into value-based health care models.

Observation of Hand Hygiene Practices in Home Health Care.

OBJECTIVE: To describe nurse hand hygiene practices in the home health care (HHC) setting, nurse adherence to hand hygiene guidelines, and factors associated with hand hygiene opportunities during home care visits. DESIGN: Observational study of nurse hand hygiene practices. SETTING: and Participants: Licensed practical/vocational and registered nurses were observed in the homes of patients being served by a large nonprofit HHC agency. METHODS: Two researchers observed 400 home care visits conducted by 50 nurses. The World Health Organization's "5 Moments for Hand Hygiene" validated observation tool was used to record opportunities and actual practices of hand hygiene, with 3 additional opportunities specific to the HHC setting. Patient assessment data available in the agency electronic health record and a nurse demographic questionnaire were also collected to describe patients and nurse participants. RESULTS: A total of 2014 opportunities were observed. On arrival in the home was the most frequent opportunity (n = 384), the least frequent was after touching a patient's surroundings (n = 43). The average hand hygiene adherence rate was 45.6% after adjusting for clustering at the nurse level. Adherence was highest after contact with body fluid (65.1%) and lowest after touching a patient (29.5%). The number of hand hygiene opportunities was higher when patients being served were at increased risk of an infection-related emergency department visit or hospitalization and when the home environment was observed to be "dirty." No nurse or patient demographic characteristics were associated with the rate of nurse hand hygiene adherence. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS: Hand hygiene adherence in HHC is suboptimal, with rates mirroring those reported in hospital and outpatient settings. The connection between poor hand hygiene and infection transmission has been well studied, and it has received widespread attention with the outbreak of SARS-CoV-2. Agencies can use results found in this study to better inform quality improvement initiatives.

"A catalyst for action": Factors for implementing clinical risk prediction models of infection in home care settings.

OBJECTIVE: The study sought to outline how a clinical risk prediction model for identifying patients at risk of infection is perceived by home care nurses, and to inform how the output of the model could be integrated into a clinical workflow. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This was a qualitative study using semi-structured interviews with 50 home care nurses. Interviews explored nurses' perceptions of clinical risk prediction models, their experiences using them in practice, and what elements are important for the implementation of a clinical risk prediction model focusing on infection. Interviews were audio-taped and transcribed, with data evaluated using thematic analysis. RESULTS: Two themes were derived from the data: (1) informing nursing practice, which outlined how a clinical risk prediction model could inform nurse clinical judgment and be used to modify their care plan interventions, and (2) operationalizing the score, which summarized how the clinical risk prediction model could be incorporated in home care settings. DISCUSSION: The findings indicate that home care nurses would find a clinical risk prediction model for infection useful, as long as it provided both context around the reasons why a patient was deemed to be at high risk and provided some guidance for action. CONCLUSIONS: It is important to evaluate the potential feasibility and acceptability of a clinical risk prediction model, to inform the intervention design and implementation strategy. The results of this study can provide guidance for the development of the clinical risk prediction tool as an intervention for integration in home care settings.

A Predictive Risk Model for Infection-Related Hospitalization Among Home Healthcare Patients.

Infection prevention is a high priority for home healthcare (HHC), but tools are lacking to identify patients at highest risk of developing infections. The purpose of this study was to develop and test a predictive risk model to identify HHC patients at risk of an infection-related hospitalization or emergency department visit. A nonexperimental study using secondary data was conducted. The Outcome and Assessment Information Set linked with relevant clinical data from 112,788 HHC admissions in 2014 was used for model development (70% of data) and testing (30%). A total of 1,908 patients (1.69%) were hospitalized or received emergency care associated with infection. Stepwise logistic regression models discriminated between individuals with and without infections. Our final model, when classified by highest risk of infection, identified a high portion of those who were hospitalized or received emergent care for an infection while also correctly categorizing 90.5% of patients without infection. The risk model can be used by clinicians to inform care planning. This is the first study to develop a tool for predicting infection risk that can be used to inform how to direct additional infection control intervention resources on high-risk patients, potentially reducing infection-related hospitalizations, emergency department visits, and costs.

Medicare home health payment reform may jeopardize access for clinically complex and socially vulnerable patients.

The Affordable Care Act directed Medicare to update its home health prospective payment system to reflect more recent data on costs and use of services-an exercise known as rebasing. As a result, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will reduce home health payments 3.5 percent per year in the period 2014-17. To determine the impact that these reductions could have on beneficiaries using home health care, we examined the Medicare reimbursement margins and the use of services in a national sample of 96,621 episodes of care provided by twenty-six not-for-profit home health agencies in 2011. We found that patients with clinically complex conditions and social vulnerability factors, such as living alone, had substantially higher service delivery costs than other home health patients. Thus, the socially vulnerable patients with complex conditions represent less profit-lower-to-negative Medicare margins-for home health agencies. This financial disincentive could reduce such patients' access to care as Medicare payments decline. Policy makers should consider the unique characteristics of these patients and ensure their continued access to Medicare's home health services when planning rebasing and future adjustments to the prospective payment system.