Grant: Cat Gr: Policy Research for HST -SPOR-Patient-Oriented Health Care Systems Res.

With the growing number and need for older adults transitioning from hospitals to long-term care, this research will inform the development of virtual care policies across sectors (i.e., hospitals and long-term care ) to optimize outcomes for older adults. The focus is to include older adults and their family/care partners to work with professionals of multiple disciplines in virtual team-based care planning. We will map existing policies and interview stakeholders (e.g., older adults, families, physicians nurses, and social workers) to generate useful evidence to inform policy development. A virtual policy workshop will be held to work directly with stakeholders to ensure relevance and close gaps. A policy brief will be produced collectively with older adults, families, and clinicians from the Community Advisory Committee. Policies resulting from this research focusing on seamless transitions will help to address health equity barriers to care provision by ensuring a standardized requirement for hospitals and long-term care to include relevant stakeholders (e.g., older adults, families, and interdisciplinary professionals) in care planning to support transitions. The virtual team-based care planning policy is timely considering the impact that the COVID-19 pandemic had on the quality of care that older adults received in hospitals and long-term care. This research will ensure that inclusive care planning and clear communication between services continue so that the safety of older adults is prioritized, dissatisfaction and poor communication of goals of care for families are prevented, and staff burden related to repeating previously completed assessments is reduced. Stakeholder involvement in this research ensures that their voices are acknowledged and used to shape policies that meet their needs.