Implementing the interRAI Check-Up Comprehensive Assessment: Facilitating Care Planning and Care Coordination during the Pandemic

Background: Long-stay home care patients are a large population of older adults with multi-morbidity and frailty. The COVID-19 pandemic posed challenges to executing care coordination and completing in-home assessments due to provincial mandates restricting in-person care. We evaluated the implementation of the interRAI Check-Up Self-Report instrument administered by phone and video.

Methods: We report on a mixed-methods study, which involved the collection and analysis of survey and focus group data. Care coordinators from two regions in Ontario who had implemented the Check-Up at least once between March 2020 to September 2021 were recruited via convenience sampling.

Results: A total of 48 survey respondents and 7 focus group participants consented to the study. Advantages of completing the Check-Up over the telephone or video call included: reduced travel time, reduced risk of disease transmission, familiarity with the assessment questions, and reduced time spent administering the assessment. Limitations most frequently reported were: the inability to see the living environment, hearing impairments, inability to observe non-verbal responses or cues, language barriers, difficulty building rapport, and difficulty understanding the patient.

Conclusions: The Check-Up was advantageous in providing sufficient information to create a care plan when administered over the phone and by video. Implementation of the Check-Up assessment was facilitated by familiarity and alignment with other interRAI assessments. Our results indicate that population characteristics need to be taken into consideration for administration of self-report style of assessments.