interRAI Asia Oceania Regional Conference 2010 in Australia
May 3-4, Brisbane, Australia

Arrangements for the first major Regional interRAI Conference are now well advanced.

Fifteen senior interRAI Members from around the world have agreed to participate in the meeting – delivering keynote presentations; hosting workshops and providing informal advice.

The Program has been designed carefully to accommodate a range of stakeholders including policy makers; health service administrators; clinicians, researchers and developers.

The program will cater for both those who are very familiar with the interRAI system, and those who are wishing to learn what it is all about. Workshops will enable a high level of interaction between participants and presenters, across a wide range of topics.

Please join us in Brisbane at this unique and exciting event. 


Home Care Plans for NZ – The National Implementation Project

The interRAI National Implementation Project is nearing the end of the first stage of development. The project led by the Ministry of Health is a phased 4 year implementation of the interRAI Minimum Data Set Home Care 2.0 (MDS-HC) and Contact Assessment (CA) to improve assessment processes for older people in New Zealand.
Upon completion, the twenty one District Health Boards (DHBs) will use the assessments primarily for people over 65 years who require needs assessment for access to long term publicly funded services in the home or for residential care. DHBs may use the Contact and/or Home Care assessments within their individual service delivery model to assess client’s needs. This includes use of interRAI methodology such as CAPs and outcome scales to inform the clients care plan. In this way different DHBs have flexibility to meet their service delivery needs in individual ways yet have the benefit of standardised assessment results to equitably support clients in their district. The Information Communication Technology aspect of the plan also attends to future capability to collect and use aggregated data to inform local and national planning.
The implementation plan includes a funding model that supports collaboration among DHBs and focuses on operational as well as capital requirements. The plan also provides National Criteria regarding: use of interRAI in New Zealand, Training and Workforce, Maori Access, Information Communication Technology and Post-implementation management.
To date six DHBs are using interRAI at the minimum requirement for support needs assessment. It is likely that DHBs will also use the assessments for wider purposes.

For comment or questions about the interRAI project please contact the Project Manager on +64 3 372 3042 or 027 212 7308, or by emailing olderpeople@moh.govt.nz.


Quality Indicators for Acute Care in Australia

Work has commenced towards developing a suite of quality indicators for the care of frail older people in acute hospitals.  The Academic Unit in Geriatric Medicine at the University of Queensland (Australia) will lead an NHMRC funded study to identify and field test quality indicators based on the interRAI Acute Care assessment system.  The project, lead by Professor Len Gray at UQ, and Dr Caroline Brand at Royal Melbourne Hospital, will also examine the efficacy of a range of existing indicators which examine clinical processes in hospital.  The field work will involve 10 hospitals in Queensland and Victoria, and will conclude late in 2010.

interRAI has already produced QIs for long term care, and will soon release new sets of indicators for home care and post-acute care. For further information click here.


New Zealand interRAI Methodology User Group - from small beginnings to increasing capability for collegial support

Following several years of activity, New Zealand adopted the use of interRAI Home Care and Contact assessment tools with the announcement in July 2008 of Ministry of Health funding to support a nation wide implementation over the next three to four years. Prior to this, five District Health Boards (DHBs) were involved in a two year pilot investigating the use of the home care assessment tool. To support the assessors involved in that pilot, an informal ‘user group’ was established to help assessors share experiences and provide collegial support for each other. The assessors met via a teleconference and continued to meet to discuss interRAI well after the actual pilot had officially finished.

That ‘user group’ has now been firmly established as the New Zealand interRAI Methodology User Group and now comes under the auspices of Dr Nigel Millar the New Zealand interRAI fellow who appoints a new chair on a regular basis.
Nigel Millar says, “the group is an open forum for anyone with an interest in interRAI in New Zealand. I am very pleased with the collegial support and effort that people are investing in interRAI and this forum is a good example of that. I would recommend that anyone with an interest become part of the group, and that includes anyone from Australia too!”.

The terms of reference and contact details for the forum are available from olderpeople@moh.govt.nz.


Recent publications

The CeGA Online Paper in AJA – This paper describes a method for using the interRAI Acute Care system to conduct geriatric assessment over the internet. [Gray, L. and R. Wootton (2008). "Comprehensive geriatric assessment 'online'." Australas J Ageing 27(4): 205-8.]

Reliability of the interRAI suite in BMC Health Services – Results of a large multinational study which examined the reliability of the items in the new interRAI suite. [Hirdes, J. P., G. Ljunggren, et al. (2008). "Reliability of the interRAI suite of assessment instruments: A 12-country study of an integrated health information system." BMC Health Serv Res 8(1): 277.]