Q: You’ve won a $1 million NIH grant to study how text messaging might speed up decisions about transferring nursing home residents. What is your goal?
A: Transferring nursing home residents to the hospital is very costly, but perhaps even more important is the physical and emotional toll that transferring the resident has. In as many as 60% of cases, the transfer is avoidable. If interdisciplinary communications are timely and centered around evidence-based, high-quality care, then more appropriate transfer decisions can be made.
Q: How will you tell if texting is a valid way to improve the process?
A: We’re using natural language processing to apply computer-based algorithms to extract salient information [from 86,000 texts], to help us capture meaning and to detect relationships. We’re very interested in the concept of what matters to the resident or their family, honoring their preferences.
Q: What matters when choosing a text message platform?
A: We used Mediprocity. It includes features specifically designed for long-term care and even users external to the organization can be added to this secure texting environment. That’s really important because in long-term care, a lot of times the people that you need to help make decisions — physicians, family members — are not in the facility physically.
Read more about the project here.
From the January/February 2023 Issue of McKnight's Long-Term Care News
