New research seeks to inform prevention and clinical management of COVID-19 in nursing and retirement homes

CHEPA members Andrew Costa and Arthur Sweetman, with co-applicants Ahmad von Schlegell and Manaf Zargoush, have received an operating grant from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) for a new research project entitled “Using Facility Administrative Data to Inform Prevention and Improve the Clinical Management of COVID-19 Infection, Illness, Hospitalization for Nursing Homes and Retirement Homes.”

The research proposal notes that older adults with underlying health conditions are particularly vulnerable to SARS-CoV-2 infection (COVID-19)  and its complications, with those residing in congregate care facilities such as long-term care/nursing homes and retirement homes being particularly vulnerable. There is not currently Canadian evidence or generalizable international evidence for older adults on:

1. How aspects of facility staffing models and related operational decisions affect COVID-19 outcomes;
2. The complete spectrum of clinical manifestations of serious COVID-19 illness; or
3. Why some suffer severe COVID-19 symptoms or COVID-19 related death while others do not – especially there has been no use of person-specific information regarding frailty and multimorbidity applied to understanding this difference. Interactions between such factors have not been studied.

The research will seek to close these critical knowledge gaps by using electronic medical record (EMR) data combined with home-specific human resources and other administrative data to build algorithms that generate prognostications to support decision-making regarding operational issues, including infection control practices and approaches to care.