Valuing Quality in Aged Care: A Cost-Benefit Framework for interRAI Implementation

Improving aged care quality is a global priority. Effective monitoring and evaluation systems are the mechanism through which this priority can be realized. The interRAI consortium offers an integrated clinical information system that spans multiple care settings to support quality improvement in clinical care, meeting policy, industry, and recipient needs. However, the economic value of implementing these systems remains unknown, complicated by challenges in monetizing relevant costs and benefits. Using Campbell and Brown's cost-benefit methodology, we present a flexible framework to evaluate the cost-benefit of implementing interRAI as a minimum dataset for aged care, focused on the cost-benefit domain of care quality. Our framework provides a comprehensive foundation for cost-benefit analysis of interRAI implementation. It presents an informative starting-point for high-level decision-makers to reliably estimate the value of implementing integrated clinical information systems at multiple levels.