Long-term services and supports experts from UMass Medical School will discuss how to use data to develop outcome-based measures to ensure the quality of home and community-based services (HCBS) at the World interRAI Conference in Toronto, Canada, April 13.
Marybeth McCaffrey, JD, and Rebecca Laes-Kushner, MA, MPA, of the Center for Health Law and Economics will present Implementing Outcome-Based Quality Measures Using the MDS-HC at 1:30 p.m. They will explain that outcome-based measures are an essential but often missing puzzle piece in assuring HCBS quality, and promoting advanced payment models to include HCBS. The MDS-HC, or the Minimum Data Set Home Care, is a tool to help identify the needs of and services for older adults and people with disabilities who live in the community.
Many validated outcome-based measures developed by interRAI may be constructed from the data collected in Massachusetts through the Long Term Services and Supports (LTSS) Policy Lab, a resource in partnership with Massachusetts state agencies to aid executive-level decision-makers in program planning, policy evaluation and fiscal forecasting in the LTSS arena.
interRAI is an international collaborative to improve the quality of life of vulnerable people through a seamless comprehensive assessment system. The consortium strives to promote evidence-informed clinical practice and policy decision-making through the collection and interpretation of high-quality data about the characteristics and outcomes of people served across a variety of health and social services settings.