Functional assessment is a difficult and tedious process that nursing home staff must perform. Assessment methods used today do not achieve their intended goals, primarily owing to the diversity of assessment instruments, conflicting uses for the data, and the inherent limitations of a process designed for paper-based data collection. We propose to implement and test a new and much broader model of clinical assessment. It applies recent advances in software technology to greatly reduce complexity, increase flexibility, and directly address the specific shortcomings of all existing techniques. It collects more data at the same time as it reduces the assessment burden, because optional data are collected only when earlier inputs show need for it. It captures data at any point in time, not just during the scheduled assessments, and it uses the arrival of certain kinds of screening data as trigger events that prompt the further in-depth assessment. Besides capturing needed data which is currently inaccessible or lost, the reduced burden of the new process should lead to a measurable improvement in data quality. Ultimately, this can help to improve the overall quality of care in nursing homes.
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