A collective of long-term care providers and technology companies is working together to develop the most comprehensive health record system in the nation to monitor the impact of care treatments among nursing home residents and conduct robust public health surveillance of infections.
The Long-Term Care Data Cooperative is the first of its kind where providers oversee how their data is used, particularly by academic researchers and public health specialists, according to the American Health Care Association (AHCA), which represents more than 14,000 nonprofit and proprietary skilled nursing centers, assisted living communities, sub-acute centers, and homes for individuals with intellectual and development disabilities.
Healthcare technology platform company PointClickCare recently joined MatrixCare, American HealthTech Inc., Brown University, and Exponent Inc. in aggregating EHR and associated data representing geographically and structurally diverse nursing facilities to create comprehensive health records to monitor the needs and outcomes of residents. The system will allow providers to receive targeted data reports that can help improve care. It will also support public health surveillance and academic research to generate real-world evidence on the effectiveness of different treatments and care practices.
“We are extremely excited to have PointClickCare, a company committed to improving residents’ outcomes with data, join the Cooperative to help us continue to protect and care for our most vulnerable resident population in an ever-changing environment,” said David Gifford, M.D., M.P.H., chief medical officer at AHCA and a board-certified gerontologist, in a statement. “Before we started this effort, we found little academic research or evidence on what clinical treatments work in elderly nursing home residents because they are often excluded from federally funded research due to lack of data. Today’s announcement opens the door for research to help understand how best to treat our residents.”
“The pandemic has driven long term and post-acute care providers as well as life sciences companies to leverage longitudinal patient data to alleviate challenges with site based clinical trials, and we can expect this collaboration to pave the way for future health care innovation,” said Jeff Wessinger, vice president and general manager of life sciences at PointClickCare, in a statement. “We have a pulse on the majority of aging patients in North America, and we’re proud to share that data, when authorized, with health care organizations, government agencies, and life sciences companies to help unearth cures and improve outcomes.”
AHCA notes that one barrier to developing appropriate clinical and operational responses to COVID-19 has been the lack of comprehensive data. In fact, most clinical guidelines are based on studies among younger and healthier individuals, with little known on what works for older individuals living in nursing homes, often with multiple chronic diseases. While the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have data reporting systems, they do not provide sufficient clinical information to understand and evaluate the impact treatments such as vaccines and antivirals have on the lives of residents. The cooperative will attempt to address these challenges.
