Rehabilitation for the frail elderly: models of care and quality indicators

Wednesday, September 9, 2015 12:00 pm - 12:00 pm EDT (GMT -04:00)

Register for a free TVN webinar: Rehabilitation for the frail elderly: models of care and quality indicators (Final results of TVN Knowledge Synthesis Grant) -- Lora Giangregorio, PhD and Caitlin McArthur (MScPT, PhD student), University of Waterloo.

20 minutes a day, once a week. It is barely enough time to get many a long term care (LTC) resident up and moving around, yet that is the average time now allotted for individualized physiotherapy (PT) in LTC.

PT can maintain or restore function in LTC residents, yet a cost-effective model of delivery remains elusive. In 2013, there were funding cuts to rehabilitation in LTC in Ontario, and an environmental scan revealed that access to individualized exercise and rehabilitation has been severely limited and replaced with generic group exercise programs that are not suitable for frail elderly adults with complex needs.

There were calls for guidance on evolving models of care in the face of budget shortages, and quality indicators (QIs) to help advocate for resources for the seriously ill elderly in LTC.

Join Dr. Lora Giangregorio and Caitlin McArthur as they discuss the results of a scoping review describing the types of rehabilitation interventions evaluated in LTC, the outcomes used to evaluate the interventions, and tools or models used to guide allocation of services. The results of an associated consensus process to determine which current quality indicators could be used to evaluate physical rehabilitation in long-term care will also be presented.

The results of this project will not only provide clinicians and policy-makers with knowledge on how to evaluate the impact and quality of rehabilitation services in LTC (e.g. what QIs to use), but also identify the gaps in knowledge and identify areas for future research for rehabilitation for the frail elderly.