Workforce development to provide person-centered care

ABSTRACT

Objectives: Describe the development of a competent workforce committed to providing patient-centered care to persons with dementia and/or depression and their caregivers; to report on qualitative analyses of our workforce's case reports about their experiences; and to present lessons learned about developing and implementing a collaborative care community-based model using our new workforce that we call care coordinator assistants (CCAs).

Method: Sixteen CCAs were recruited and trained in person-centered care, use of mobile office, electronic medical record system, community resources, and team member support. CCAs wrote case reports quarterly that were analyzed for patient-centered care themes.

Results: Qualitative analysis of 73 cases using NVivo software identified six patient-centered care themes: (1) patient familiarity/understanding; (2) patient interest/engagement encouraged; (3) flexibility and continuity of care; (4) caregiver support/engagement; (5) effective utilization/integration of training; and (6) teamwork. Most frequently reported themes were patient familiarity – 91.8% of case reports included reference to patient familiarity, 67.1% included references to teamwork and 61.6% of case reports included the theme flexibility/continuity of care. CCAs made a mean number of 15.7 (SD = 15.6) visits, with most visits for coordination of care services, followed by home visits and phone visits to over 1200 patients in 12 months.

Discussion: Person-centered care can be effectively implemented by well-trained CCAs in the community.

KEYWORDS:

• Psychological and social aspects
• Alzheimer's disease
• depression

Acknowledgments

The authors thank the patients and caregivers, who have allowed our CCAs into their homes and lives and we thank the CCAs who have provided exceptional care and support to our patients and caregivers. The contents of this publication are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the US Department of Health and Human Services or any of its agencies.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The project described was supported by the Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services [grant number 1C1CMS331000-01-00]. Drs Guerriero Austrom and Gao were also supported in part by NIH P30 AG010133.