CRI

Hillel Sapir

With the end of the fiscal year just around the corner, July 1^st, Centerstone and CRI have been in a frenzy; grant proposals are being completed and re-evaluated, government financial records are being examined and research information is being sorted.  The past year’s information is being sorted so that all the records accurately show what occurred and plans for this coming year must be approved so that all the programs, grants and research projects can continue to run smoothly.  Due to this change in pace, my last week of work was slightly different than normal.

The grant, the BE Well Program, with which I work, has reached its first 6 month milestone.  The grant was approved in November of 2010, but patient intake and research did not begin until January 2011.  While still in its infancy, 6 months allows program staff to evaluate the grant with some level of understanding.  At our last staff meeting we discussed how the program had matured and how it would progress over the next 6 months.  We examined patient intake and release rates, patient cooperation, mental health and stability issues, and the possibility of patient relapse.  Since this research exclusively deals with patients who are quite cognitively impaired and have been diagnosed with severe mental illnesses, these issues are of great concern to the program staff and as such, require extensive examination during such milestone markers.  Following the patient information discussions, we discussed an additional grant the program applied for – a $200,000 grant focused on health information technology improvement.  This additional grant, if approved, would help support review of medical records and information transfer.  We also detailed the possibility of contracting a dietitian to focus upon educating BE Well clients in proper food and nutrition intake.  The continuation of this discussion expanded to include the possibility of including a nutritionist, dentist, and ophthalmologist within the near future.   

With the conclusion of the meeting, I began to prepare the BE Well Program analysis plan.  An analysis plan is a document which specifically details how evaluation and research questions will analyze the data collected.  An example of one data collection agent and how it is to be analyzed is as follows:

a.        Class Rosters and Attendance

i.         We will record every patient group activity Centerstone holds and then record the number of patients who attend and the individual attendance of the patients

ii.        This data will allow us to examine if there is an association between class attendance and progress within the program, and if so, at what point do the benefits outweigh the cost of the program or patient knowledge ‘plateau.’  This will also allow us to decide and extrapolate the effects of class size on participation, progress and social maturity within the patients.

While I did partake in a number of other tasks at work this past week, I still had my own personal work, which included completing the SAMHSA required Clinical Registry Data.