Using Clinical Guidelines to Improve the Care of Older Persons Conference

University Of Minnesota, Minneapolis MN

Investigators

Abstract

DESCRIPTION: (Provided by the Applicant) The University of Minnesota Center on Aging will sponsor a conference in June 2006: "Using Clinical Guidelines to Improve the Care of Older Persons." This Summer Institute/conference will bring together clinical practitioners, researchers, health care administrators, and public policymakers to explore ways in which extant guidelines for managing chronic care problems among older persons can be incorporated into practice at various sites including office practice and nursing homes. It will examine the successes and challenges faced in getting practice settings to use guidelines with older patients. Our goal for this conference is to move beyond admiring the problem, to inspiring and assisting a group of practice settings to introduce one or more guidelines into their care routines. The Institute is designed to meet the AHRQ conference goal of a dissemination conference where research findings will be summarized and communicated broadly to organizations and individuals that have the capability to use the information to improve the outcomes, quality, access to, and cost and utilization of health care services. However, it goes beyond the usual approach of merely disseminating the conference proceedings to include an implementation component to put the results into practice. A central outcome of this conference is a collaborative to identify and recommend practical tools or strategies that will speed implementation of the best evidence-based practices that impact care for older adults. One goal will be to identify several sites providing ambulatory and nursing home care that are willing to implement one or more guidelines and test the effects of doing so. To this extent, the proposal overlaps with another AHRQ category: Development of a research agenda that targets identification and/or development of successful practice change tools that will enhance implementation of improvements in care delivery. The work of the conference will contribute to the future research agenda for improving implementation of best practices in geriatric care. At the conclusion of the conference, one or more innovative partnerships among a variety of constituencies within the region (providers, payers, regulators, consumer advocates,) will form to collaborate on creating the necessary infrastructure to promote and facilitate utilization of practice change tools throughout health care systems. The proposed conference is the result of a collaboration of several groups representing all affected constituencies; policy institutes, academics, providers, QIOs, and consumer organizations. The speakers have been chosen because of their research findings and/or because of their real-world experience in affecting system change.