MEASUREMENT OF SERVICE PLANS IN AL: ASSURING IMPLEMENTATION OF FUNCTION FOCUSED CARE

Service plans should clearly articulate the care needs and preferences of the resident, how and when that care will be provided. The purpose of this study was to test the reliability and validity of the Checklist for Function Focused Care in Service Plans. Function Focused Care is a care approach that optimizes function and physical activity during all care interactions. A total of 249 participants were recruited from 26 assisted living facilities. The majority of participants were white, female and unmarried. There was support for internal consistency with an alpha coefficient of .96, inter-rater reliability with a correlation of .80, construct validity based on Rasch analysis and INFIT statistics ranging from .69 to 1.29, and a significant association with function focused care activities. This measure can be used to evaluate whether service plans are completed in such a way as to optimize the residents function and physical activity.