Initiative Turns Nursing Home into Laboratory for Improving Elder Care

The Business Innovation Factory is partnering with the Tockwotton Home, Quality Partners of Rhode Island and the MIT AgeLab to create a real-world laboratory for developing and testing new solutions, products and models for improving elderly care.

“The elderly population is exploding and our country is not prepared to meet the challenges of delivering high quality and cost effective care. We must act now to design a new model for elderly care and improve the experience of seniors who require assistance,” says BIF founder and chief catalyst Saul Kaplan. “The Nursing Home of the Future initiative will enable us to quickly and cost effectively test big-win solutions in a manageable environment and then to scale those ideas nationally. This bold approach gives elders the lead voice in improving their care and quality of life.”

Leveraging the BIF Experience Lab platform, the “Nursing Home of the Future” will create a platform for innovators and industry partners to transform current approaches to elderly care in assisted living and nursing care facilities. Outcomes will provide a roadmap for redesigning the next generation of elderly care solutions and help companies and care providers deliver better value to the burgeoning elderly population.

Tockwotton Home

For this effort, the partnership team engages residents and staff at Tockwotton Home, a 30-bed assisted living center and 42-bed skilled nursing home located in Providence, Rhode Island. The Tockwotton Home provides the partnership access to a working home where residents and partners can co-develop a real-world understanding of the elderly experience and a platform for developing and testing new solutions.

Tockwotton Home also plans to open a new 150-bed facility in 2010 in which they will dedicate a patient unit and common living areas to the Nursing Home of the Future initiative. This will provide project partners with a unique opportunity to participate in a holistic redesign of the resident experience, including the physical space of the facility, and house the ongoing platform for research and innovation around elderly care delivery models.

Quality Partners of Rhode Island

Also central to the partnership is the leadership and expertise of Quality Partners of Rhode Island (QPRI). QPRI carries the Medicare and Medicaid designation as the National Nursing Home Quality Improvement Organization Support Center since 2002. In this role, QPRI serves as a national leader and center of excellence in nursing home quality and provides clinical support and quality improvement materials to Quality Improvement Organizations (QIOs) throughout the United States.

QPRI provides domain expertise to this effort, a platform for communicating to the national nursing home care community and an interface to Medicare. QPRI is represented by Clinical Director Stefan Gravenstein, M.D., M.P.H., a nationally renowned geriatrician and professor at Brown University with extensive experience related to the design, development and implementation of nursing home quality initiatives.

“Nursing home care needs much more than incremental improvements to face the challenges of changing demographics, meet the growing demand for more complex medical care and provide our elders with the higher quality of life they deserve. But we cannot expect to achieve this level of innovation without working directly with residents in their native environment,” says Gravenstein, who will serve as chief clinical director for the project. “This novel approach provides a real opportunity to evaluate and significantly improve the nursing home care experience. We will directly determine what works, what doesn’t, and what is financially viable by putting new ideas to work in the real world with feedback from our elders as they live in this environment. There is significant potential for delivering relevant, real and lasting progress to the nursing home experience through this approach.”

Phase 1

Partners are now recruiting Phase 1 sponsors and mobilizing the initiative. Phase 1 activities will begin with a comprehensive analysis and mapping of the current experience of nursing home and assisted-living residents, an analysis of unmet needs in current care models, the identification and prioritization of an initial set of target opportunities, the architectural design of the patient unit in the new home, and ongoing stakeholder engagement and communication efforts.

“The Nursing Home of the Future allows us to capture the experiences of residents as they move through daily life. In this environment we can construct a more accurate picture of how residents interact with the facility and staff, utilize private and shared spaces, make use of equipment and furnishings, access medical care and engage in recreational activities,” says industrial design expert and BIF Experience Labs Director Mickey Ackerman. “This method of real-time intervention and direct end-user engagement enables us to quickly and cost effectively develop and test new ideas, products and systems while simultaneously determining if a novel solution will work in a real-world environment. You simply cannot do this in a corporate or academic research lab or classroom.”

“Tockwotton Home has a unique opportunity to make innovation a cornerstone of our operation,” says Tockwotton Home Executive Director Kevin McKay. “We are very proud of the high quality care we provide our residents, yet we know we must continue to find new and better ways to support our residents and their families, both today and in the future. Our partnership with the Business Innovation Factory and Quality Partners will enable Tockwotton Home to better understand and improve every aspect of the nursing home experience and serve as a national model of nursing home care innovation.”

Advisory Group

BIF has established a national advisory group to assist with the endeavor. National advisors include Joe Coughlin, Director of the MIT AgeLab; Dr. Richard Besdine, Director of the Center for Gerontology and Health Care Research at Brown University; and Scott Williams, Chief Marketing Officer of Morgans Hotel Group.

Inquiries

Inquiries and interested parties can contact Melissa Withers by email or by phone at 401-278-9134.

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