THE WELLNESS MODEL.

"THERE IS A BIG DEBATE about whether assisted living is a medical model or a social model," says Luke Gregory, vice president of business development for LifeTrust America. "If you're taking care of 84 year old women who take six to nine medications with three or more activities of daily living (ADLs), it sounds a little like healthcare to me."

Yet for the assisted living resident, separate records are kept at hospitals, private physicians' offices, clinics, therapy facilities, and labs. Information is not shared. So who's in charge of the big picture?

No one, says Greg Roberts, business analyst for Accu-Med's Healthy Outlooks. "There is rarely a central repository of information on residents' conditions, the drugs they take, their allergies, or their dietary restrictions that allows all physicians to know what is being diagnosed and prescribed. We are often limited to paper documentation."

That can be risky for an assisted living facility responsible for the well being of its residents. The ideal is to use software to collect and centralize healthcare information--to identify diagnoses, medications, diet, therapy, activities, etc.--into one complete clinical health record for each resident. The record can be printed our and taken to each healthcare provider to give a total picture of the resident's health status.

Whether medications are administered by the facility under the supervision of a consultant pharmacist, or by home health, a centralized record can prevent problems of contraindicated medications, side effects, and drug interactions.

"If a resident has to go to a hospital or nursing home, he or she can be admitted with a current valid list of medications, diagnoses, allergies, diet needs, etc.," says Roberts. "It's a way for the assisted living facility to provide more service and more security, and to help insure wellness by getting all the information on the same page. It's a simple concept, but it's pretty important."