inteRAI and QPS Benchmarking - What does it mean for New Zealand Clients?

After attending the recent New Zealand Aged Care Association 2011 conference in Auckland, it was very clear that many people are very confused about both how the inteRAI will work for them and what exactly they are getting.

Some common questions where:

• will I still need to benchmark my performance?
• will I still need my care planning software?
• how is this all going to work?
• what is this going to cost me later on?

These are all valid questions; however, I will be mainly covering the first question, as it is most relevant to our clients. After talking through the issues and concerns with both clients and other exhibitors, it was apparent that there is a need to clarify the following points.

What is the inteRAI?

The inteRai is simply a resident assessment system. The inteRai will provide you with a standard way of clinically assessing each of your residents.

What will the inteRAI provide me with?

• a comprehensive assessment of each resident
• a measure of the acuity of each resident
• a measure of the overall average acuity of your home or hospital
• output summaries of clinical assessment protocols
• competitive comparison graphs on some clinical observations

What won't the inteRAI do?

• provide comprehensive benchmarking reports
• compare your performance across ALL residential care business metrics and KPI's
• provide you with tools and audits which give you comparable insights into your organisations strengths and opportunities for improvement
• provide you with advice on what your data means and any recommended actions
• provide a care planning system

The QPS Benchmarking team see the New Zealand wide implementation as a positive first step towards having one standard assessment system for residents across the country. It is challenging for the QPS Principal Consultant to make in depth analysis or provide recommendations to New Zealand clientele without the ability to understand resident care needs and acuity levels.

The introduction of the inteRAI assessment should enhance the usability of your QPS Benchmarking data, as we will be able to cross correlate all of your results with your resident acuity measure. This means that those organisations with more acute residents would expect higher clinical outcomes in comparison to other organisations with less acute residents.

It is expected that those of our clients that take up the inteRAI will excel in their adoption and will quite easily introduce it as a supporting resident assessment tool in their organisations. Our clients are going into this project already aware of how their organisation is performing against similar organisations both in New Zealand and Australia. Furthermore, they are experienced in collecting and understanding data in relation to their performance.

I would encourage any New Zealand clients with any questions around their inteRAI implementation and how it may affect their need for software/performance measurement systems to contact me directly.

Adam Holcroft

General Manager

E: adam@qpsbenchmarking.com

T: +61 2 4229 5880