While much of our bootcamp series is centered on the INTERACT intervention, we know that nursing homes are adopting other care improvement tools as well.  Among these tools are the Know it All Before You Call Cards available from the American Medical Directors Association (AMDA).

Some nursing homes participating in our bootcamp coaching calls report that they use these cards in place of INTERACT’s care paths and Change-in-Condition cards (see, for example, GEN&RC’s “Quality Improvement” reply on our homepage). According to AMDA’s Caring for the Ages journal, “These tools are intended to help nursing staff evaluate a pa­tient and collect data before notifying a practitioner about a resident’s change of condition…Included is information on how to use the set plus 78 cards listing changes of condition alphabetically.”

A set of cards can be ordered online from AMDA: http://www.amda.com/tools/protocols.cfm.  The cost is $45 for AMDA members and $65 for non-members.

If your nursing home uses the Know-it-all cards, tell us what you think of them in our poll.  If your nursing home uses other tools for managing care transitions, let us know what they are and how they are working for you by posting a reply below or emailing CALTCM’s program director Annie Rahman at [email protected].