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Senectus
takes its name the Roman God of old age. Its vision is
to establish a centre in the UK for providing an
evidence base for services delivering care to older
people, and to promote good practice in the assessment
of older people to improve their care. Senectus has been
funded for an initial two year period by Pfizer
Ltd (UK).
Aims
- To
develop effective assessment processes based
primarily on the use of the interRAI MDS
assessment system.
- To
support the implementation of best practice in
assessment and use of assessment data.
- Provide
performance information on a routine basis to
subscribers.
- To
act as an information resource for accredited UK
and international researchers and to provide
auditing information for quality assessment.
Health and social care services for older people
face increasing demands from older people
requiring care and from regulations to improve
effectiveness and demonstrate quality of care.
At the core of good quality care for older
people is thorough assessment of needs at the
point of referral for care and at subsequent
periodic reviews. The NHS plan
(2000) and NSF for Older People (2001) set out a clear
commitment by the government to introduce high quality
assessment for older people. Guidance for the Single
Assessment Process (SAP) was published in January 2002
with a requirement for a policy for SAP to be in place
by June 2002 and a satisfactory SAP to be in place by
April 2004.
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The Senectus Programme
aims not only to promote good assessment to improve
decision-making for individual users, but also to offer
performance data on a routine basis for organisations to
support decision-making by service providers and policy
makers. Senectus is facilitating achieving this through
the establishment of the most comprehensive database of
health profiles in the UK to date. Data is obtained
using the interRAI Minimum Data Set (MDS) assessment
system, the most comprehensive and widely used
assessment system for older people in use today. The MDS
instruments help deliver person centered care and data
that can be aggregated to monitor outcomes of care and
information for policy and planning.
More
information
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