Grant: Partnerships for Health System Improvement (PHSI)

Our study will examine the experience of elderly nursing home residents who need care outside of the nursing home and require transfer to a hospital emergency department for assessment and/or treatment and transfer back to the nursing home. While much of the literature focuses on the experience in the emergency department, little is known about the experience of the elderly during the process of being transferred to emergency and return to the nursing home. The study will take place in Edmonton, Alberta and Kelowna, British Columbia. All transfers of residents from nursing homes, over one year via the emergency medical system, to the emergency departments will be studied, with further in-depth analysis of nursing homes with the highest referral rates. The residents, their families, transport crews, physicians and staff will be interviewed. The main purpose of the interviews is to create a picture of the resident's care in each of the three settings and to distinguish successful and unsuccessful transitions. The results of this study include the development of a tool to measure successful transitions of elderly nursing home residents to the emergency department and back to the nursing home that will improve the quality of care and reduce the burden on busy emergency departments. This knowledge will assist healthcare decision makers and improve the lives of frail elderly who need to seek emergency services.