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There is plenty happening in the interRAI World.
There has been a major revision of the acute care systems, with an entire set of new hospital systems planned for release in early 2017. There will be a public launch in Brisbane, Australia at the "Global Acute Care Excellence Forum" on February 20, 2017.
Canadian interRAI Fellow Shannon Stewart is leading a superb effort in the development of a range of children's instruments, which has been appropriately recognised by the receipt of the Amethyst Award.
Vince Mor, one of our most senior interRAI Fellows in the US has been awarded the prestigious Mary K. Ousley Champion of Quality Award for his contributions to quality in the long term and post-acute care community.
Our Canadian fellows also have won a major Informatics award.
Our US colleagues continue their success in promoting the interRAI Home Care to individual states across the USA.
Prof. Len Gray Editor
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interRAI researcher wins Canadian service excellence award
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 Dr. Shannon Stewart and her team won the Amethyst Award for their work in developing the interRAI Child and Youth Suite of Assessment instruments.
On June 22, Dr. Shannon Stewart, Associate Professor at Western University in London, Ontario, Canada received Provincial recognition for her work leading a team at the Child and Parent Resource Institute (CPRI) in her previous role within the civil service. Dr. Stewart and her team were recipients of the Ontario Public Services highest recognition for service excellence, the Amethyst Award. The award was in recognition of the hard work and dedication required to develop the interRAI Child and Youth Suite of Assessment Instruments.
The Amethyst Awards program was created in 1992 to recognize Outstanding Achievement by Ontario Public Servants. Recipients are selected based on exceptional work in the areas of client service, innovation, leadership, professional achievement, building a diverse organization, championing learning and working horizontally across government. Awards are given to Ontario Public Servants who have extended themselves, whether in creating a whole new way of delivering a service, developing time and money-saving technology, or showing extraordinary professionalism and care in performing their daily tasks.
Under Dr. Stewart's leadership, the partnership between interRAI and CPRI was an opportunity to drive change on a global scale for children, youth with mental health challenges and their families. This outstanding contribution and ground-breaking work has facilitated an understanding of issues and challenges in children's mental health across Ontario in a way never before possible. High quality data is being used to develop and evaluate new pathways to service, foster optimal outcomes for our most vulnerable children, and facilitate service system integration to enhance capacity in our mental health system. Dr. Stewart and her research team at Western University, along with the Applied Research and Education (ARE) team at CPRI continue to work in partnership to support the roll-out of the tools to support streamlined access, service and improved outcomes for children and families; setting a new standard for data collection, knowledge mobilization, and evaluation.
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Dr. Vincent Mor has been awarded the Mary K. Ousley Champion of Quality Award for his contributions to quality in the long term and post-acute care community.
The American Health Care Association and National Center for Assisted Living (AHCA/NCAL) announced the interRAI researcher as the 2016 recipient of the award, for his research on how the delivery of health care affects the well-being of frail and chronically older adults, particularly in skilled nursing centers.
Dr. Mor, who is the Director of AHCA's independent research center at Brown University's Center for Long-Term Care Quality & Innovation Center, helped to create the nursing center Minimum Data Set (MDS) resident assessment tool. He conducted some of the first research on national rehospitalization rates in skilled nursing facilities that helped shape AHCA's quality initiative.
Mary Ousley, AHCA Quality Cabinet Co-Chair and namesake of the award, said that Vince's passion for research had produced innovative care strategies that were delivering positive outcomes for many of their patients and residents. "His collaborative efforts have transformed technical, scientific data into important real-life quality improvement resources that have proven essential for our profession by giving us the tools to examine state and federal policies in the clinical assessments of long term care residents," she said.
AHCA presents the Mary K. Ousley Champion of Quality Award to an individual or organization that has made a significant national contribution to advancing quality performance in the long term care field. Recipients must consistently advocate for quality approaches, while demonstrating the ability to educate and advocate for a systems approach to quality improvement. Recipients also display leadership in the development, promotion, and implementation of quality improvement initiatives that improve the quality of care and quality of life for individuals in need of long-term care. In 2011, the Friend of Quality Award was renamed the Mary K. Ousley Champion of Quality Award to honor the ongoing legacy and commitment to quality care demonstrated by its namesake, Mary Ousley, a licensed nursing home administrator and nurse who has dedicated her life to quality improvement programs in long-term care.
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Advance notice: Global Acute Care Excellence forum
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The interRAI Network in Acute Care and the University of Queensland will host a special, two day forum in Brisbane, Australia on February 20-21, 2017 to explore issues around hospital care for patients with major functional and psychosocial problems.
The Global Acute Care Excellence forum: Ensuring safe passage for frail and vulnerable adults across the hospital continuum will attract a range of local and international speakers who will bring a variety of perspectives to the discussion. The highlight will be the international launch of the new interRAI Acute Care for general adult assessment, along with release of fully integrated revisions of the interRAI Emergency Department (ED), the interRAI Acute Care for Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment (AC-CGA) and the interRAI Post-Acute Care and Rehabilitation (PAC-Rehab).
For the first time, public release of this instrument set will coincide with release of User's Manuals and commercial software.
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interRAI collaboration leads to Canadian Informatics award
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interRAI was part of a team that included CIHI, Health Canada, First Nations Inuit Health Branch, Alberta Health Services, Alberta Health, and Momentum Healthware, which won the Canadian Health Informatics Awards for Innovation and Care Delivery. The award was for the introduction of the interRAI Home Care assessment system to all First Nations communities in Alberta.
The six year initiative is now attracting attention from First Nations communities in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, as well as the East Coast branch of FNIHB. The project has also generated an interest in the pediatric home care instrument, as well as the adult and children's mental health instruments.
Congratulations to all involved! 
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In this project, COLLAGE 360, a comprehensive assessment system and wellness coaching program that focuses on prevention and wellness was implemented in one continuing care retirement community.
Following completion of interRAI's Community Health Assessment and the Wellness tool and directed conversations with a wellness coach, older adults developed an individualized vitality plan that outlined life goals, supporting goals and action plans for goal achievement. Results from this program suggest engagement in the assessment and wellness coaching process via the COLLAGE 360 program translated into sample older adults sensing that they lived in a more supportive environment when compared with elders not receiving any wellness coaching. In addition, the older adults had positive responses in the areas of mood and life satisfaction.
Howard EP, Schreiber R, Morris JN, Russotto A, Flashner-Fineman S.
COLLAGE 360: A model of person-centered care to promote health among older adults.
Journal of Ageing Research and Healthcare. 2016; 1.
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- interRAI Norway is pleased to announce that Lene Elisabeth Blekken successfully defended her theses "Fecal incontinence, constipation and laxative use: Epidemiology and development of an implementation strategy for improving fecal incontinence care in nursing homes" at NTNU in Trondheim on 3 June 2016. See recently published papers by Lene Blekken under "Recent Publications".
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PC Italian Manual now available!
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PC Italian is now available for sale in interRAI's print and ebook catalogs!
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