The American Medical Directors Association (AMDA) Foundation and Pfizer have partnered to sponsor the Quality Improvements Awards, a program designed to encourage the development of innovative projects that will help to make a distinct impact on the quality of long term care.
Types of Projects Supported
All projects must be conducted in a long term care setting, such as an assisted living facility, nursing facility, home care, or hospice. Proposals may be submitted in any one of the following areas.
Education
- Proposals in this category should focus on facility staff education and/or training programs.
- Examples include but are not limited to educational programs in pain management, unintended weight loss, end of life care, management of behavioral problems, decreasing the prevalence of injurious falls, and implementation of AMDAClinical Practice Guidelines.
Quality Improvement Programs
- Proposals should focus on validation of AMDA Clinical Practice Guidelines in the long term care setting; training and mentoring facilities or organizations in CQI; or specific QI projects covering areas similar to what is listed above under educational projects (e.g., pain management, unintended weight loss, management of behavioral problems).
Research Projects
- Research projects should be approximately one year in length and conducted in a single facility. Results should be generalizable.
- Examples could include an investigation into the characteristics of residents in the long term care setting whose weight loss is unavoidable, or a study looking at critical factors with hearing aid use.
Health Literacy
Two $5,000 awards will be granted in this category.
- Health literacy projects should focus on ways to enhance improving healthcare communications between long term care patients and their family/caregivers/surrogates. Devising such systems are particularly important given the diminished literacy skills, cognitive capacity and communication skills of many long term care residents, especially those with dementia.
- Examples could include projects that focus on the following: innovative ways to communicate given literacy and functional limitations (e.g., cognitive impairment, hearing or vision loss); different strategies for communicating given technological advances (e.g., e-mail, video-conferencing); and, methods of communicating with patients and families surrounding functional and disease-focused issues, taking into consideration diminished literacy skills and cultural differences.