NYU Meyers-led study explores quality of care for people with dementia in adult day centers

Adult day centers provide community-based health and social services for older adults living at home, including many living with Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia. While these centers have long been essential community resources, they’ve only recently started collecting data to measure how in-center services impact patient outcomes—and the measures currently used (such as falls and hospitalizations) tend to reflect the priorities of payers like Medicare, rather than the priorities of older adults and families, which are focused on improved quality of life.

A new study led by Tina Sadarangani, PhD, RN, assistant professor at NYU Rory Meyers College of Nursing, is working to identify and incorporate new person-centered outcome measures that allow adult day centers to evaluate how the care they deliver aligns with the values, preferences, and strengths of older adults with dementia and their family caregivers. The study, funded by the Alzheimer’s Association and Brain Canada Foundation through a $250,000 grant, is a collaboration with Keith Anderson, PhD, MSW, chair and professor of social work at the University of Mississippi. 

Sadarangani and Anderson are hoping to identify the aspects of care in adult day centers that matter most to people in these centers through qualitative interviews, and then work with experts across the country to evaluate these using validated outcome measures. 

“As researchers in long-term care, we know that one of the best therapies we can offer people living with dementia and their families is adult day services, also known as adult day care,” Sadarangani said. “However, only in the last few years, thanks to Dr. Keith Anderson, have we begun to measure quality of care for people with dementia in adult day centers. This will allow us to hold adult day centers to the highest standards of care that reflect the values and priorities of people with dementia.” 

“From our previous research, we learned that outcome data collection in adult day services was limited in terms of scope and breadth,” Anderson said. "Existing outcome measures do not include person-centered outcomes that focus on the older adults' values, perspectives and strengths.”

Goals of the project include gaining a better understanding of the outcomes most important to people with dementia who use day services, finding valid ways to measure these outcomes, and adding these person-centered outcome measures to an existing data collection system to learn more about the impact of adult day centers in the lives of people living with dementia.

“Not only will this work benefit older adults with dementia, but we believe that it will also benefit family caregivers and adult day service providers,” Anderson said.