Grant: Summer Program in Aging

Over the course of the pandemic, cases of physical and emotional suffering of long-term care (LTC) residents have been brought to light in Canada. Staff shortages continue to be reported across all provinces, which leaves LTC homes unable to meet the increasingly complex needs of residents (e.g., caring for those with dementia). Technology can help to support the care provided to residents by healthcare professionals and caregivers, the independence of older adults, and connect the residents to their loved ones. Despite this, it remains challenging to measure how well a LTC home is performing, as there is no single method to collecting these data across Canada and it is unclear what makes some LTC homes more successful than others. This research aims to improve the delivery of LTC services by presenting evidence on the existing approaches used worldwide to measure performance in LTC, soliciting the opinion of Canadian experts in the field on the factors that can play a positive role on performance in LTC homes, and examining the relationship between these key success factors and technological capacity and performance in LTC homes. This research will contribute to developing a systematic approach comprehensively capture the performance of LTC homes and identifying the technologies that can be associated with better performance.