Implementing and Evaluating INTERACT in VA CLCs

The project was designed to show that engagement by frontline CLC staff, in using the INTERACT (VA version of INTERACT) program will identify Veterans' clinical problems earlier, help evaluate and safely initiate management of acute changes in conditions in the CLC, communicate more effectively with physicians about Veterans' conditions, thereby avoiding unnecessary hospitalizations, and provide more emergent hospitalizations when necessary.

The project planned to implement the INTERACT quality improvement program as the intervention in up to 15 randomly selected, pair matched CLCs for a 6 month intensive training period and an additional 12-18 month ongoing follow-up monitoring period.

Additionally, a quantitative and qualitative evaluation of the implementation of the INTERACT intervention was done to characterize the fidelity with which CLCs in the intervention pairs participated in training, engaged in regular conference calls, undertook root cause analyses identifying why hospitalizations occurred and used the tools in which they were trained.

The program's effect is based on three core strategies: 1) enabling front-line NH staff to identify acute conditions early in their course, thereby helping to prevent them from becoming severe enough to require acute hospitalization; 2) providing communication and decision support tools that assist with the safe and effective management of certain conditions in the Community Living Center (CLC) without transfer to the acute hospital; and 3) educating CLC staff in advance care planning and discussions about end-of-life and comfort care plans, and thus increasing the use of advance directives, comfort care measures, and palliative and hospice care as an alternative to hospitalization when appropriate.