AMDA to Join the Long-Term Quality Alliance

Columbia, MD — AMDA—Dedicated to Long Term Care Medicine (AMDA) has been officially approved for membership in the Long-Term Quality Alliance (LTQA). LTQA was formed three years ago in response to the growing demand for long term services and supports, as well as the expanding field of providers who are delivering that care. The organization seeks to identify and foster quality measures that reflect what is important to consumers and family caregivers receiving long term services and supports, and position providers to apply best practices to enhance quality of life, improve care, and reduce costs. 

As a LTQA member, AMDA will help facilitate dialogue and partnerships to help break down provider silos in which quality initiatives have occurred, bring consumers and family caregivers together with long term care providers and government agencies to agree on goals and measures of concern, strengthen links between quality measurement goals and evidence-based practices to achieve them, and collaborate with other organizations on common priorities and goals. 

“One of the LTQA’s key goals is to examine how to improve care transitions and avoid unnecessary hospital admissions among frail and chronically ill people receiving long term services and support. This is a priority for AMDA as well, and we have been working on these issues for some time. To date, these efforts have produced a Transitions of Care Clinical Practice Guideline and a broad array of educational programs and sessions. Most recently, we released the Caregiver’s Communication Guide: Observing and Communicating Changes of Condition to help empower caregivers to ultimately prevent hospitalizations and/or readmission to a post-acute/long term care setting,” said AMDA President Matthew Wayne, MD, CMD. He added, “We look forward to working with LTQA and its members to continue to break down the silos between care settings and support practitioners, patients, caregivers, and others in their efforts to ensure the best possible quality of care and health outcomes.”

AMDA will join over 40 other organizational LTQA members, including AARP, American College of Health Care Administrators, American Health Care Association, Commonwealth Fund, Leading Age, The Joint Commission, and several other leading long term care, health, and consumer advocates.