Article
A New Geriatric Care Model Limits Hospitalization Among Nursing Facility Residents
A new study reports on the first year of the implementation of OPTIMISTIC, an innovative program they developed and implemented to prevent unnecessary hospitalizations of nursing facility residents.
A new study from Indiana University and Regenstrief Institute researcher-clinicians reports on the first year of the implementation of OPTIMISTIC, an innovative program they developed and implemented to prevent unnecessary hospitalizations of nursing facility residents.
Their paper, "The OPTIMISTIC approach: preliminary data of the implementation of a CMS nursing facility demonstration project," appears in the January 2015 issue of Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. OPTIMISTIC is supported by a 4-year, 2012 award of $13.4 million from CMS.
The goal of OPTIMISTIC—an acronym for Optimizing Patient Transfers, Impacting Medical quality and Improving Symptoms: Transforming Institutional Care—is to improve care and communication within nursing facilities and between these facilities and acute-care institutions so problems can be caught and solved before transporting a resident to the hospital becomes necessary.
Complete report on ScienceDaily: http://bit.ly/1FL9l6c
