Memory Care Home Solutions
Disrupting Dementia Care
Project Date
Oct 2022—June 2024
Type of Evaluation
Formative, Needs Assessment, Planning, Process
Setting
Community-based
Overview
Memory Care Home Solutions (MCHS) provides families with non-pharmacological, evidence-based treatment that improves the quality of life and health outcomes for people living with dementia and care partners. With the Disrupting Dementia Care grant, MCHS aimed to disrupt the standard dementia-care model and create a pathway for non-pharmacological dementia treatment to be delivered within the health care system. It sought to understand the system, design a compatible model, and determine a method to assess and understand the feasibility of replication.
The Evaluation Center partnered with MCHS to document challenges and barriers faced with creating a model and disseminating learnings to organizations. We conducted key informant interviews, provided recommendations for an Implementation Guide, and developed an evaluation plan to fully test the billing model.
Project Description
Background
Memory Care Home Solutions (MCHS) focuses on extending and improving quality time at home for families caring for loved ones with memory loss, dementia, or Alzheimer’s disease. MCHS serves a vulnerable population, often overlooked by the healthcare system. Non-drug dementia interventions have been tested in randomized controlled trials and found to be more effective than available drug therapies, but people do not have access to these treatments. Currently, payment mechanisms and infrastructure to support non-drug treatment for dementia care do not exist in the healthcare delivery system. Because of this, providers are reluctant or unable to adopt these best practices. MCHS provides families with non-pharmacological, evidence-based treatment that improves the quality of life and health outcomes for people living with dementia and care partners.
With this grant, MCHS aimed to increase health equity for older adults with dementia by disrupting the standard dementia-care model and creating a pathway for non-pharmacological dementia treatment to be delivered within the health care system. By creating change in the delivery and reimbursement of dementia treatment within healthcare, MCHS reduced barriers and increased health equity for this underserved population.
Evaluation Center Activities
- Conducted key informant interviews with healthcare providers and referral partners.
- Disseminated key informant interview findings.
- Assisted with the development of a data system by providing recommendations based on the key informant interviews, and worked with MCHS to identify the necessary data points and metrics to include in the system.
- Developed an evaluation plan to fully test the billing model.
Our Products
- Key informant interview guide
- Key informant interview finding summaries
- Recommendations for the data system that emerge from key informant interviews
- Evaluation plan
Funder
Missouri Foundation for Health
Contact Person
Heather Jacobsen, MPH
Evaluation Manager (she/her/hers)
- Phone: 314-935-5130
- Email: hjacobsen@nospam.wustl.edu