The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) https://www.ahrq.gov within HHS, is partnering with the University of New Mexico’s ECHO Institute (Project ECHO) https://hsc.unm.edu/echo in Albuquerque and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI to establish the National Nursing Home COVID Action Network https://ahrq.gov/nursing-home/index.html
Nursing home residents are especially vulnerable to COVID-19 due to their age, underlying frailty, and their communal living conditions. Today, nursing home staff who care for nursing home residents are the most needed and most at-risk essential workers. It is estimated that almost 56,000 nursing home residents and staff have died from COVID-19, representing more than one-quarter of the nation’s known COVID-19 deaths.
Goals for the Network are to prevent COVID from entering nursing homes, identify residents and staff who have been infected, and prevent the spread of COVID between staff, residents, and visitors, provide safe and appropriate care to residents with mild and asymptomatic cases of COVID-19, ensure that all staff members have the knowledge, skills, and confidence to implement best practice safety measures to protect residents and themselves, and reduce social isolation for resident’s families and staff during difficult times.
The Project ECHO model was established to provide training and tele-mentoring for healthcare professionals and staff across the nation and the world. Project ECHO includes over 250 training partners across the U.S.
To achieve the goals, over 15,000 nursing homes certified in Medicare and Medicaid programs will be able to participate in a 16 week training program using a standardized curriculum developed by IHI.
The new National Nursing Home COVID Action Network’s training program will use the ECHO Model since it is interactive, case-based, and uses a hub-and-spoke knowledge sharing approach.
The ECHO model is not traditional telemedicine where the specialist assumes care of the patient but is instead tele-mentoring a guided practice model where the participating clinician retains responsibility for managing the patient.