Quality Measures and Results

How We Improve the Quality of Care of Seniors

The Seniors Quality Leap Initiative has engaged North America’s leading Long Term Care providers in a novel, collaborative effort to drive improved clinical quality and safety as they relate to the quality of life of seniors, by sharing performance data and the results of specific quality improvement initiatives.

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Benefits to Providers and Residents

  • Positively change the care experience and quality of life for long-term care residents
  • Provide Long Term Care facilities with a set of validated quality indicators and benchmarking data on quality indicators and quality of life measures
  • Sustain a data repository with universal quality improvement tools and methodologies
  • Advance evidence informed practice through quality improvement projects and benchmarking opportunities

Reports on Quality Care Measures

Using the data derived from interRAI assessment tools, SQLI organizations receive quarterly reports on their performance on a number of quality of care and quality of life indicators.

SQLI measures quality of care with over 25 quality indicators, including an overall quality composite score and over 40 quality of life indicators. Below is a sample list of some of these quality measures:

  • Antipsychotics without a diagnosis of psychosis
  • Improvement in behavioral symptoms

  • Continuous pain

  • Pain severity
  • Falls and falls with injury
  • Cognitive and communication decline
  • Hospitalizations
  • Quality of life indicators including items related to safety, comfort, autonomy, dignity, social life, staff responsiveness, food and more

Performance reports include organizational benchmarks over time, as well as U.S. and Canadian reference benchmarks. SQLI members also benchmark their performance on resident quality of life using the interRAI Quality of Life Survey.

Results

Quality of Life: Since 2015, the member organizations have been completing interRAI Quality of Life Surveys with eligible long term care residents. The InterRAI survey is an internationally valid survey designed to give long term care residents with the opportunity to share their perceptions on a variety of quality-of-life domains including relationships, environment, comfort, food, and participation in meaningful activities.

Annually, results are analyzed and SQLI members review and benchmark their results and discuss initiatives from higher performing homes. Following an analysis of results in the post-COVID-19 era, there is a collective desire to improve resident social life.

Improving Pain Management: The first major test for SQLI has been a focus on improving pain management. Pain affects approximately 80% of older adults living in long-term care. The improvement objective was to reduce the percentage of residents with worsened pain and pain severity, and improve residents’ quality of life.

The results are impressive: Among all SQLI members, the percentage of residents with moderate or severe pain has improved by 8 percentage points, and some member organizations have improved by more than 20 percentage points. Meanwhile, the percentage of residents with continuous pain has also improved by 8 percentage points, with members improving from 4 percentage points to 22 percentage points. 

Antipsychotic Use: Prior research in geriatric medicine has shown that the use of antipsychotic medications by older people can result in significant adverse effects and increased mortality. This article focuses on the implementation of a methodology created by the Appropriate Use of Antipsychotics (AUA) collaborative, a project developed by the Senior Quality Leap Initiative (SQLI) in Canada, to reduce the use of antipsychotic medications among a population of older individuals at a long-term chronic hospital.

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