Assisted living facilities are the fastest growing means of providing assistance to the elderly but generally care is provided by untrained, nonprofessional staff. Therefore, the overall, long term goal of our program is to improve the quality of care for persons residing in assisted living facilities by providing effective, affordable education to assisted living employees. In Phase I, the objective of the project was to develop a comprehensive, interactive, multimedia assisted living employee training program on CD-R0M which focused on one aspect of nutrition, """"""""Food Preparation"""""""". In Phase II, the series of nutrition modules will be completed.
The specific aims for expansion of the CR-R0M based training program will include: 1) develop the comprehensive training program by completing five additional nutrition-related modules; 2)develop accompanying written materials including technical support and customer services; 3) rigorously evaluate the effectiveness of the CD- R0Ms on the knowledge provided by assisted living caregivers through a controlled, randomized design; 4) develop the marketing plan of nutrition-related CD~R0Ms to the target audience of assisted living facilities. By the end of Phase II, we will have completed the development, production, and commercialization plan of a comprehensive training program encompassing nutritional care provided by assisted living caregivers.
The assisted living industry is growing at a very rapid rate throughout the U.S. Assisted living facilities, administrators, and their staff will be the primary market for the CD-R0M based nutrition training program. The potential market for this program is immense with projections that there will be a doubling of the number of assisted living beds by the year 2000. This will make approximately 1.4 million beds at $33.1 billion.
