Partners in Dementia Care: A Telephone Care Consultation Intervention Provided to Veterans in Partnership With Local Alzheimer's Association Chapters

Background:

Dementia affects the entire family by negatively impacting multiple domains including physical health, emotional health, social relationships, and legal and financial issues (Gurland, 1980; Kunik, Snow, Molinari, Menke, Souchek, Sullivan et al, 2003; Schulz, Visintainer, \& Williamson, 1990; Wright, Clipp, \& George, 1993). Particularly challenging is accessing the range of services needed to address the care needs of both the individual with dementia and the primary family caregiver. Common issues include: obtaining adequate diagnostic testing; understanding treatment options and medications; difficulties with memory and behavioral symptoms; and care- and illness-related strain (Mitnick, Leffler, \& Hood, 2010). Additionally, many unmet care needs are the result of service fragmentation and inadequate communication among different medical providers, medical providers and consumers, and medical providers and community services (Reuben, Levin, Frank, 2009).

Built upon two prior studies: the Cleveland Alzheimer's Managed Care Demonstration (Bass, Clark, Looman, McCarthy, \& Eckert, 2003) and the Chronic Care Networks for Alzheimer's Disease (CCN/AD) (Maslow \& Bass, 2003; Maslow \& Selstad, 2001), PDC was a 5-year research investigation that tested the effectiveness of a telephone-based, innovative care-coordination intervention designed to address the unmet care needs of Veterans with dementia and their family caregivers across all dementia stages. PDC was implemented through formal partnerships between the VA medical centers and local Alzheimer's Association (AA) chapters. Essential features of PDC included: 1) formal partnerships between VA medical centers and Alzheimer's Association Chapters; 2) a multidimensional assessment and treatment approach, 3) ongoing monitoring and long-term relationships with families; and 4) a computerized information system to guide service delivery and fidelity monitoring. For a complete description of the PDC intervention protocol please see Judge, Bass, Snow, Wilson, Morgan, Looman, McCarthy, and Kunik (2010).

Objectives:

The primary objective of this investigation is to rigorously test the impact of PDC on a number of outcomes for Veterans with dementia, family caregivers, and healthcare providers. Within VA Medical Centers, the focus will be on improving dementia care in primary care clinics, including geriatrics.

Two specific research objectives and corresponding hypotheses will be addressed:

1. To test the impact of PDC on three categories of outcomes: psychosocial well-being outcomes (patient and caregiver effects); healthcare service use (patient effects only); and health care cost (patient effects only). Hypothesis 1: PDC, compared with usual care, will improve psychosocial well-being, including depression, health status, adequacy of care, and quality of care for patients with dementia and their caregivers. Hypothesis 2: PDC, compared with usual care, will reduce healthcare service use for patients with dementia, including hospital admissions, emergency department visits, nursing home admissions, and physician visits. Hypothesis 3: PDC is preferred to usual care, based on cost-effectiveness and cost-benefit analyses. Hypothesis 4: The PDC intervention will be more effective than usual care in improving psychosocial well-being and reducing health care service use for patients and caregivers dealing with more severe patient impairment (e.g., cognitive status, functional status, and level of problem behaviors).
2. To evaluate the impact of PDC on role and intra-psychic strains caused by dementia and its care (patient and caregiver effects).

Hypothesis 5a: PDC, compared with usual care, will decrease patient role and intra-psychic strain, including embarrassment about the illness, emotional strain, relationship strain, and social isolation.

Hypothesis 5b: PDC, compared with usual care, will decrease caregiver role and intra-psychic strain, including role captivity, work care-related strain, relationship strain, emotional and physical health deterioration, and caregiving efficacy.

Hypothesis 6: The PDC intervention will be more effective than usual care in decreasing role and intra-psychic strains for patients and caregivers dealing with more severe patient impairment (e.g., cognitive status, functional status, and level of problem behaviors).

Methods:

The proposed study was a 55-month, controlled trial of PDC. The project was conducted at two intervention sites and three comparison sites matched on organizational, provider, and patient characteristics.

Partners in Dementia Care was compared to usual care. Both groups received educational materials about dementia at the start.

PDC Intervention The Chronic Care Model (Bodenheimer, Wagner, \& Grumbach, 2002; Bodenheimer, Wagner, \& Grumbach, 2002) was used as an overarching framework to implement PDC and included the following components: 1) Formal linkages between medical centers (the VA) and community agencies (the Alzheimer's Association); 2) Organizational support from key leaders and broad-based training about PDC; 3) Delivery system redesign and decision support systems; 4) Self-management of dementia as outlined by the PDC intervention protocol; 5) The development of the PDC Care Coordination Information System (CCIS) as the clinical information system.

PDC had four primary ways of assisting families: 1) providing disease-related education and information; 2) offering emotional support and coaching; 3) linking families to medical and non-medical services and resources; and 4) mobilizing and organizing the informal care network. Two key staff members implemented the intervention: a VA Dementia Care Coordinator (VA DCC) in VA medical centers and an Alzheimer's Association Care Consultant (AA CC) in Alzheimer's Association Chapters. VA DCCs primarily focused on veterans' medical and non-medical needs and assisted families with effectively using VA resources; AA CCs primarily focused on needs of informal caregivers such as care-related strain and accessing non-VA resources. The intervention protocol consisted of: 1) Assessment of Care Needs across medical and non-medical care issues that addressed 23 domains for Veterans and 14 domains for caregivers; 2) Development of Care Goals that matched the priorities of Veterans and caregivers; 3) Development of Action Steps which were concrete behavioral tasks intended to help families move toward goal achievement (e.g., individual responsible for completing each task, expected completion date); 4) On-going Monitoring of Action Steps on a regular basis to ensure timely completion of tasks, address potential barriers, modify or add action steps, and identify new goals.

Analytic Plan With one exception, measures of "objective" characteristics, including community and support-service use, service knowledge, number of informal helpers, and Veterans' impairments, were based on information reported by caregivers. The one exception was a measure of impairment based on scores from a standardized mental status test that was administered to Veterans over the telephone (i.e., the Blessed Orientation-Memory-Concentration Test; Katzman et al., 1983). Additionally, a small number of Veterans (approximately 5%) with mild dementia did not have a caregiver; "objective" characteristics for these individuals were self-reported by the Veteran. Information used to construct measures of "subjective" characteristics, such as feelings about or perceptions of the quality of care and care-related strain, came directly from the individual whose feelings or perceptions were being represented.