Tooling nurses to assess complexity in routine home care practice: Derivation of a complexity index from the interRAI-HC

Catherine Busnel; Fanny Vallet; Catherine Ludwig

doi:10.1002/nop2.686

Tooling nurses to assess complexity in routine home care practice: Derivation of a complexity index from the interRAI-HC

Nurs Open. 2021 Mar;8(2):815-823. doi: 10.1002/nop2.686. Epub 2020 Nov 25.

Authors

Catherine Busnel¹, Fanny Vallet¹, Catherine Ludwig²

Affiliations

¹ Research and Development Unit, Geneva Institution for Homecare and Assistance (imad), Carouge, Switzerland.
² Geneva School of Health Sciences, HES-SO, University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland, Geneva, Switzerland.

Abstract

Aim: Home care nurses often use the Resident Assessment Instrument-Home Care (interRAI-HC) to assess health needs. However, this tool does not assess complexity. This study proposes to derive a complexity index (CI) from the interRAI-HC using the operational definition of the dedicated COMID checklist (COmplexité Multidimensionnelle des prises en soins Infirmières à Domicile).

Design: Data were collected at the baseline assessment of the fraXity study (N = 231, aged ≥ 65), which relied on an observational longitudinal design.

Methods: Measures were the interRAI-HC, from which the CI binary variables were computed and the COMID, used as a reference.

Results: Twenty-six CI variables were computed from the interRAI-HC, and all but three correlations were significant. The correlation between the CI score and the COMID score was ρ = 0.730 (p < .001).

Conclusions: The study demonstrates that complexity can be assessed directly from the interRAI-HC by deriving a CI.

Keywords: assessment; complexity; home care; interRAI-HC; nurses; nursing.

Publication types

Observational Study
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Aged
Delivery of Health Care
Geriatric Assessment
Home Care Services*
Humans
Nurses*