Statewide Implementation of CAPABLE-Community Aging in Place, Advancing Better Living for Elders in the Michigan Medicaid Home and Community Based Waiver Program

Main study: Nearly half of older adults report problems with function, which can lead to difficulty with activities of daily living and nursing home placement. Thus, there is a need to implement evidence-based models of care to improve function and those factors that support function in older adults living in the community. One such model is CAPABLE (Community Aging in Place Advancing Better Living for Elders), a person-centered, nurse and occupational therapy intervention supported by assistive devices and home modifications. The investigators build on prior work that translated CAPABLE and conducted preliminary testing of a package of implementation strategies. This R15 application will test site-level adoption and sustainability after deploying a package of implementation strategies (readiness assessment, training, facilitation, champions, coalition building, and audit and feedback). Sites will be randomized to internal facilitation alone or internal facilitation plus external facilitation. This work will impact implementation science by testing two approaches to implementation of an evidence-based intervention to improve outcomes among older adults in a Medicaid Waiver program. ADMINISTRATIVE SUPPLEMENT We extend the Parent Trial by addressing a problem found while deploying CAPABLE with beneficiaries with Alzheimer's disease (AD) or dementia. There are 39.8 million informal caregivers in the US and 16.3 million who care for someone with AD or dementia; and 1,500 of those are in the Michigan waiver. Most beneficiaries with those conditions did not accept CAPABLE as they were unable to receive instruction. Interventions that improve caregiver knowledge, confidence, and self-efficacy improve care they provide. Thus, the goal is to extend provision of CAPABLE to beneficiaries with AD or dementia via the engagement of their informal caregivers. This work is significant as there are 1,500 beneficiaries with AD or dementia in the waiver who could benefit from CAPABLE yet many did not, as they were to receive instructions. To date, CAPABLE has only been designed to be used directly with the individuals without caregiver involvement. In the waiver, beneficiaries are required to have a designated caregiver, therefore, modifying the toolkit for use by caregivers could aid in deploying CAPABLE to beneficiaries with AD or dementia.