Challenged by resident interviews in MDS 3.0? Options and tradeoffs.

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By Jan Bennet, RN, NHA, C-NE, Director of Clinical Design, American HealthTech

When it comes to workflows, MDS 3.0 challenged providers big time with rethinking current roles, creating new ones, and reshaping others. Resident interviews are among the major items of shakeup that appear to have some providers challenged with squeezing them into weekly routines.

According to a recent article in McKnights, there are providers out there who are struggling to get resident interviews done. No surprises for a couple of reasons: 1) the volume of questions, 2) the frequency by which interviews must be conducted, and 3) the different disciplines that may need to get involved to encourage residents to participate in all the interviews.  

The downside of not completing interviews? Inadequate care and citations. McKnight's quoted CMS's Thomas E. Dudley, MS, RN, who verified during a Skilled Nursing Facility Open Door forum call that "providers will be cited when such a practice is verified."

You have are a number of options to check resident interviews off your list.

1. Paper. Of course, the interviews can be done on paper with checklists, but the process is less than optimal because no one can get at data that could be of benefit to the clinical team, especially when it comes to early interventions with depression or pain, for example.
2. Online forms. While these help get the data into an electronic form for storage and retrieval later, they fail to get the data into a database where pieces of information can be matched with other clinical data for meaningful interventions.
3. Online databases. Now we're cooking. These systems are used to structure data in meaningful ways in order to analyze trends. If the database is stand alone, however, its power as a collaborative quality tool is cut short.  You’ll have to pay people to make meaningful reports of it. 
4. Integrated Wizards. This is the approach used in American HealthTech. You get all the benefits of a form, and you get step by step instructions to help new folks through the process, for complete and accurate interviews, every time.  The data that's collected is immediately visible elsewhere in the clinical system, where team members can spot trends and be proactive. Finally, you can make particular interviews available to surveyors on demand, enabling quick review and faster surveys as surveyors quickly become trustful of  its completeness, accuracy, and quality. Wizards remove the guesswork.

Clinicians are reporting that they are learning more about their residents than ever before with resident interviews. When you use the Interview Wizard, the interview process can become much more interactive. You can let residents see the screen, see what you do, and see that you care. As one doc reported to AMDA, “I am getting much better information and richer data about pressure ulcers, pain, and other issues. This data will translate into quality improvement models.”

The interactive upside is twofold: better communication with residents, and better communication by the interdisciplinary team responsible for their care.