Conference call excerpt: March 10, 2007

David Gray, Ph.D.

Excerpt from call:
David Gray: One thing I am a little bit worried about is that in the old days they used the number of OT/PT positions, people working on the unit, as an indicator and it was really a surrogate for saying “well, if you have all these highly qualified people, the care must be good.” But they never measured how they interacted with the person. Now we are into this thing, that quality of life means “how many hospital days did you spend.” I think we need to be pretty strong in saying that we want an indicator of quality of participation, which will get us away from quality of life, because quality of life is contaminated by health care issues. If my measures are going to be of any value, it has to be quality of participation, it can’t just be quality of health.
Martha Hodgesmith: It really can’t for a CIL service product. It can’t just be--
Gray: Number of calls that came in.
Hodgesmith: Right. Or how many people you got out of a nursing home. Are you occupying a space? Or are you--
Gray: That’s quality of participation measure comes in so heavy.
Craig Ravesloot: I think we’re preaching to the converted here, gang.
Tom Seekins: But you raise an important issue that needs to be discussed regularly. The difference between “participation” and “life” when we are talking “quality of” is a bit of a semantic issue. You are trying to get around the problem of quality of life and how it has been used from a medical perspective. Sometimes that works pretty well. But sometimes they don’t get it because of the word “participation.” It some ways it might be good to be linking those as well
Gray: Right on.