CREATING AND TESTING CONNECTICUT’S UNIVERSAL ASSESSMENT TOOL ACROSS MULTIPLE POPULATIONS

In order to increase access to non-institutional long-term services and supports and facilitate level-of-need determinations, Connecticut developed a Universal Assessment (UA) for use across multiple populations through an intensive, multi-stakeholder process including a cross-walk of existing assessment tools (n=10) across the domains of ADLs, IADLs, medical/psychiatric conditions, behavior, and cognition. Additional analysis of approaches taken by other states (n=15) and other standardized tools (n=7) included item-by-item selection across domains. Screens included relevance, person-centeredness, validity, and reliability. The UA tool selected was the interRAI Home Care Assessment, modified for Connecticut’s needs. An algorithm to determine level-of-need and budget allocation from UA data was developed and tested across populations, modified from the intellectual/developmental disability population (n=~10,000) and cross-applied to data for elder/disabled individuals (n=~5300) to compare 8 levels of need. Average costs lined up as expected, but variation within each level required further refinement and testing.