About the Long-Term Care (LTC) Data Cooperative
The COVID-19 pandemic shined a spotlight on the data gap in nursing homes. To address this need, the National Institute on Aging funded the Long-Term Care (LTC) Data Cooperative, a collaboration among providers and stakeholders in academia, government, and the private sector. The LTC Data Cooperative assembles residents’ EHRs from the major specialty vendors and facilitates linkage of these data with Medicare claims to create a comprehensive, longitudinal patient record.
These data serve four key purposes:
- healthcare operations/population health analytics
- public health surveillance
- observational, comparative effectiveness research
- clinical research studies
Mission
The mission of the Long-Term Care (LTC) Data Cooperative is to improve the quality of care within skilled nursing facilities by compiling the most comprehensive data on nursing home residents nationwide – and to translate these data into accessible and actionable information designed to help clinicians, managers and policy makers improve care.
Governance
This initiative is governed by the American Health Care Association (AHCA). Together with Brown University, a pioneer of research studies using integrated data on residents that have helped the long-term care community, and Exponent, Inc., an interdisciplinary and scientific consulting company, the AHCA-led effort will assemble the largest and most comprehensive health records database from geographically and structurally diverse nursing homes and residents.