The Assisted Living Disclosure Collaborative aims to help assisted living consumers differentiate between individual facilities on several domains, including services available; pricing information; admission and discharge criteria; staffing information; and resident rights, house rules, and life safety. Workgroups are collaborating to develop uniform consensus information (data items and definitions) that can be used to describe the services and characteristics of individual assisted living residences.
The goal of
AHRQ's Assisted Living (AL) initiative is to increase the value of health care
for consumers by developing tools that help consumers and consumer
intermediaries make better choices based on improved information on
AL costs and services.
Currently, differences in State requirements and a wide variety of services and
amenities provided by individual
AL providers
make it difficult for consumers to access uniform information to determine
which
AL providers
best meet their priorities and needs.
Known now
as the Assisted Living Disclosure Collaborative (ALDC), this project is an
outgrowth of a 2006 Technical Expert Panel that recommended that AHRQ develop
tool(s) to help AL consumers differentiate between individual facilities on the
"domains" of: services available; pricing information; admission and discharge
criteria; and staffing information (RN staffing, 24/7 staffing, staff training,
and turnover). Subsequently, the domains were expanded to include resident
rights, house rules, and life safety.
To advance
these recommendations, AHRQ has been partnering with the Center for Excellence in Assisted Living (CEAL).
The collaboration between AHRQ and CEAL, has gradually expanded to include
other key AL stakeholders (providers, consumers, clinicians, and policy
experts) to work collaboratively through a voluntary consensus process to
develop uniform consensus information (data items and definitions) that can be
used to describe the services and characteristics of individual AL residences.
The ALDC is
now engaged in the voluntary consensus process.1 Four workgroups have been established:
- AL Services and Costs of Care.
- AL Staffing, Staff Training, and Turnover.
- Move-in/Move-out Criteria and Residents Rights, House Rules, and Life Safety.
- Dementia-specific Services.
Workgroup
participants (approximately 100 individuals) meet monthly to develop uniform
data items and definitions. These are then subject to formal ALDC consensus
voting and will subsequently be developed into an instrument and associated
materials. ALDC efforts are supported by a team from Abt Associates & University
of North Carolina Chapel Hill that provides measurement expertise and
logistical assistance. Current participating ALDC organizations are listed
below.
Phase II of
the project (planned for FY 09 funding) will include small-scale testing with
consumers and providers and medium- and large-scale testing with providers.
Based upon the testing results, the instrument and associated materials
developed in Phase I will be finalized. Phase III of the project (planned
for FY 10 funding) will include dissemination activities for the materials
developed (scheduled to begin in late 2010).
ALDC
efforts also support AHRQ's Strategic Effectiveness Goal "by encouraging the
use of evidence based (AL)
information in the making of informed treatment decisions and choices."
Similarly, efforts support AHRQ's Value Portfolio goals by increasing the number of people who are served by community collaboratives that are using
evidence-based measures and data... to increase health care efficiency... (Value
Portfolio Goal 1); increasing the number of new reports and tools... available
for Chartered
Value Exchanges (CVEs), States and other
decisionmakers (Value Portfolio Goal 5); and increasing the number of AHRQ
measures available for public reporting (Value Portfolio Goal 6).
Organizations
Participating in the ALDC2
Voting Organizations
- AARP
- Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
- Alzheimer's Association
- American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging
- American College of Health Care Administrators
- American Seniors Housing Association
- Assisted Living Federation of America
- Commission on Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities-Continuing Care Accreditation Commission
- Consumer Consortium on Assisted Living
- Gerontological Society of America Assisted Living-Special Interest Group
- National Association of State Ombudsman Programs
- National Association of State Units on Aging
- National Association of Social Workers
- National Association of Professional Geriatric Managers
- National Center for Assisted Living
- NCB Capital Impact
- Paralyzed Veterans of America
- Pioneer Network
Ex-Officio Organizations (non-voting)
- U.S. Administration on Aging
- Office of Disability, Aging, and Long-Term Care Policy, U.S. HHS, Office of the Secretary
- U.S. National Center for Health Statistics
- National Conference of State Legislatures
Other Key Non-Voting Participants
1. The voluntary consensus process follows the consensus requirements
specified in OMB Circular A-119.
2. Participants as of September 22, 2008.
Current as of November 2008
Internet Citation:
Assisted Living Disclosure Collaborative (ALDC). November 2008. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Rockville, MD. http://www.ahrq.gov/research/aldc.htm
540 Gaither Road Rockville, MD 20850