The proposed, two day working meeting, """"""""Evaluating Social Work Services in Nursing Homes: Toward Quality Psychosocial Care and its Measurement,"""""""" has its long-term objective, improved quality of psychosocial and social work services in US nursing facilities. It seeks to achieve this through three aims: 1) Establish the current state of knowledge concerning the psychosocial care of nursing home residents, with emphasis on how the established roles and functions of nursing home social workers support the provision of psychosocial care; 2) Review current approaches and barriers to the assessment and measurement of the quality of psychosocial services in nursing homes; and 3) Recommend strategies to improve the monitoring and measurement of quality psychosocial care in order to best assess the effectiveness of social work services in addressing resident and family members' psychosocial needs. The meeting will be the first coordinated, national effort to address the measurement and monitoring of psychosocial and social work services in nursing homes, in light of a recent report by the DHHS OIG which states that the """"""""oversight of the psychosocial service portion of the resident assessment process should be strengthened."""""""" It will contribute to current efforts by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the AHRQ, the Veteran's Administration (VA), and the John A. Hartford Foundation (JAHF) to examine how the delivery of health services, especially psychosocial care in nursing homes, can improve the well-being and health of older persons. A series of presentations, discussants, and small workgroups will address the aims of the meeting, with workgroups synthesizing these ideas to generate measurements and research strategies. The meeting will convene an expert panel of researchers and practitioners involved with psychosocial and mental health care in nursing homes including social workers, nurses, and psychiatrists; and key representative stakeholders in quality improvement including nursing home administrators, ombudsman, regulators, and consumers.
