LTC Data Cooperative

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the need for an electronic medical records (EMR) system to quantify infection rates and outcomes rapidly and to enable studies of vaccines and treatments among residents in long term care.

The mission of the LTC Data Cooperative is to improve the quality of care within skilled nursing facilities by translating comprehensive EMR data into accessible and actionable insights for providers, public health officials, and researchers.

Led by the American Health Care Association (AHCA), the Cooperative will utilize nursing home residents’ electronic medical records (EMR) and associated data to create comprehensive electronic health records to help providers monitor their residents’ needs and outcomes. Additionally, the system will support public health reporting as well as allow researchers to generate real-world evidence on different treatments and care practices for the elderly and individuals with disabilities in nursing homes.

Nursing Homes

Nursing Homes: Join the Long Term Care Data Cooperative! A national effort to improve the care of long term and post-acute care recipients, and to monitor the impact of treatment innovations and policy initiatives on this population.

Why Join

A major barrier to developing appropriate clinical and operational responses during this global pandemic is the lack of comprehensive data. Brown University and AHCA facilitated communication between selected EMR vendors and the CDC, and both initiatives offered the first glimpse of “real time” data on the status of the pandemic in nursing homes. The data sharing and collaborative spirit that has arisen during this time led to the concept of an industry wide centralized data sharing cooperative.

What Will Be Collected

The LTC Data Cooperative represents the coming together of major long term care EMR vendors, and thousands of nursing homes to create a real time data infrastructure to undertake public health surveillance and will also have the ability to examine changes in the use of clinical treatments. It can also be used to evaluate the impact policies have on resident outcomes. Together Brown University and AHCA have partnered with data science expert Exponent Inc., to collect and analyze EMR vendor data in a secure platform to identify trends in residents’ clinical status, care practices and outcomes that will help improve resident care.

All participants will have the opportunity to:

1. Receive routine reports to assist with care coordination and improve operations and clinical systems of care.

2. View linkage of available EMR data to Medicare Claims.

3. Voluntarily participate in research funded through NIH Funded academic partners.

Cost

It is FREE for all nursing homes.

How to Join

1. Email LTCDataCooperative@AHCA.org to receive program information, and DocuSign link for all legal agreements.
2. Once all agreements have been completed, AHCA will confirm registration via email within 72 hours.

3. AHCA will contact your vendor on your behalf to begin the data transfer process.

Current Coverage Map

Fast Facts

1516

Participating Facilities

134

Participating Organizations

5

Approved Researchers

Researchers

Researchers: Are you a researcher interested in utilizing the LTC Data Cooperative for your study? Take the following steps and apply today! Please contact us at LTCDataCooperative@AHCA.org with any questions.

How to Apply

1. Download the LTC Data Cooperative Categories of Research Catalogue to view the types of available research.

2. Choose one of the following applications:

Standard Application for Prospective Researchers: This application is for Project Investigators who have secured funding for their study.
Preliminary Approval Application: This application is for Project Investigators who have not received funding and would like to utilize preliminary approval as support for a grant application.

Applications and Research Catalogue

Meet The Team

David Gifford, MD, MPH

Title: Chief Medical Officer, AHCA

David Gifford, MD, MPH, serves as the Chief Medical Officer as well as the Director of the Center for Health Policy Evaluation in Long Term Care at the American Health Care Association. He established the Center and the Quality Department at AHCA. His interests are in improving and measuring quality in LTC as well as how regulatory and payment policies impact quality. He has developed 8 new quality measures for nursing homes that all received NQF endorsement.

He oversees a team of data analysis working with national MDS data, Medicare Claims, and Cost Reports to develop quality measures and conduct policy evaluations. Dr. Gifford also serves on the Board of the Advancing Excellence in America’s Nursing Homes campaign and the Baldrige Foundation Board and chairs the Department of Veterans Affairs Geriatric and Gerontology Advisory Committee. He serves on the NQF Measures Applications Partnership (MAP).

He is a former Director of the Rhode Island State Department of Health, where he received the National Governor’s award for Distinguished Service Award for State Officials. He led efforts to expand public reporting of quality for home health and nursing homes and to make the nursing home survey process more person centered. Prior to that he served as Chief Medical Officer for Quality Partners of Rhode Island where he directed CMS’ national nursing home-based quality improvement effort. He also is on the Brown University faculty in the Schools of Medicine and Public Health as well as being a member of Brown’s Center for Quality and Innovation in LTC. He received his medical degree from Case Western Reserve University and conducted his geriatric fellowship at UCLA where he also earned his Master’s in Public Health while a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar.

David Dore, PharmD, PhD

Title: Principal Scientist, Health Sciences, Exponent

Dr. Dore is a pharmacoepidemiologist who specializes in studying the post-marketing safety and effectiveness of medical products as they are used in customary clinical practice. He has over 15 years of experience with regulated post-approval safety studies (PASS) conducted with secondary data sources (e.g., healthcare claims), and he has developed expertise in novel data linkages and supplementary data collection to address biases in these studies. Additionally, Dr. Dore specializes in the development and research applications of large electronic health records (EHR) systems, which typically include a myriad of data types from various health systems. This work has included evaluating and improving the quality of complex EHR data, conducting applied research that involves the use of free-text clinical notes and methods to address missing data, and the design of pragmatic randomized trials. Dr. Dore has been on the faculty at the Brown University School of Public Health since 2008.

Vincent Mor, PhD

Title: Professor of Health Services, Policy & Practice and the Florence Pirce Grant University Health, Brown University School of Public Health

Vincent Mor, PhD, is a professor of health services, policy & practice and Florence Pirce Grant Professor in the Brown University School of Public Health, and has been principal investigator of 40+ NIH-funded grants focusing on use of health services and outcomes of frail and chronically ill people. He has evaluated the impact of programs and policies including Medicare funding of hospice, changes in Medicare nursing home payment, and the introduction of nursing home quality measures. He co-authored the Congressionally-mandated Minimum Data Set (MDS) and was architect of an integrated Medicare claims and clinical assessment data structure used for policy analysis, pharmaco-epidemiology and population outcome measurement. Dr. Mor developed summary measures using MDS data to characterize residents’ physical, cognitive and psycho-social functioning. These data resources are the heart of Dr. Mor’s NIA- funded Program Project Grant, “Changing Long Term Care in America,” which examines the impact of Medicaid and Medicare policies on long-term care. These data are also at the core of a series of large, pragmatic cluster randomized trials of novel nursing home-based interventions led by Dr. Mor.

Catherine Rogers Murray, MPH

Title: Managing Scientist, Exponent

Untitled (300 × 300 px) (206 × 206 px).png

Ms. Rogers Murray is an epidemiologist with expertise in managing complex research operations for large-scale, multi-site and regulatory studies. She served as a key member of a national medical product safety surveillance program (the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Sentinel Initiative), overseeing data operations and transparency initiatives to ensure the highest standards of scientific accuracy, rigor, and transparency. She specializes in program management, systems development, communication strategy implementation, and process improvement. The cornerstone of Ms. Rogers Murray’s contribution to public health is her ability to build strong partnerships among diverse stakeholders including regulatory decision-makers, medical product manufacturers, academic researchers, and the general public. She works on the business so others can work in the business.

Dustin Burns, PhD, Gstat

Title: Managing Scientist, Data Sciences, Exponent

Dr. Dustin Burns assists clients in the commercial and government sectors design and implement AI strategies at scale. Combining his background in laboratory experiments with his expertise in data analytics and cloud computing, Dr. Burns contributes to projects along the entire data science lifecycle, from experimental design and data collection, through data quality assurance, exploratory data analysis and cleaning, to modeling, visualization, and reporting. While applying AI, Machine Learning, and Deep Learning methods to address traditional business problems in new ways, Dustin strives to incorporate in his work the principles of security, explainability, and reducing algorithmic bias.

In his current role at Exponent, Dustin leads multidisciplinary teams to respond to the world's most impactful problems and to evaluate emerging technologies using AI. Employing expertise in statistics, AI and Machine Learning, programming in multiple languages and cloud computing environments, Dustin’s teams can assist with developing custom algorithms, modernizing analytics programs, advising on regulatory issues , and helping to evaluate intellectual property.

Amy Recker, MPH

Title: Project Director, Brown University School of Public Health

Amy Recker, MPH, is a project director in the Center for Long-Term Care Quality & Innovation at the Brown University School of Public Health. She directs project management for a portfolio of research projects focused in long-term care, including the Long-Term Care Data Cooperative. Her background as an epidemiologist for both the Illinois and Massachusetts Departments of Public Health has been focused on long-term care, emerging healthcare-associated infections, and multi-drug resistant organisms. During her time in Illinois, she worked on managing the emerging Candida auris epidemic spreading through skilled nursing facilities. In Massachusetts, she served as an epidemiologist on the long-term care team during the COVID-19 pandemic. She received her Master’s in Public Health, with a joint concentration in epidemiology and biostatistics, from the University of Southern California.

Lonnita Myles, MBA

Title: Project Director, Research, AHCA/NCAL

Lonnita Myles, a native of the Washington DC Metropolitan area has been at AHCA/NCAL for 9 years. Working with the Quality, Regulatory and Research team throughout her time at AHCA/NCAL, and having also partnered with the Finance and Legal team at AHCA/NCAL on various projects, she has centered her work around intensifying the organization’s quality improvement efforts. In her time at AHCA/NCAL, she has developed expertise in project management, marketing campaigns, and curating educational materials and opportunities.
In her current role as Project Director for the Long-Term Care (LTC) Data Cooperative, Lonnita leads research and management process initiatives that are centered around building quality solutions for quality care. Her experience spans various operations of digital transformation and the introduction of technological opportunities for the long-term care sector.

In the News

The LTC Data Cooperative featured in recent news.

Oct. 2022, JAMA article

Nov. 2022, Healthcare Innovation article

Nov. 2022, Provider article

Questions?

For general inquiries about the LTC Data Cooperative:

LTCDataCooperative@AHCA.org

For technical related questions:

ltcdc@exponent.com