What Is COLLAGE: The Art and Science of Aging?

COLLAGE is a national membership consortium of older adult communities, including “continuing care”, “at-home” and “housing residences”, dedicated to improving the lives, well-being and health of their residents. The program provides members with a framework for the application of integrated health and wellness assessments combined with evidence-based interventions. Participation in COLLAGE offers a community the opportunity to use a suite of computerized and scientifically-grounded health and wellness assessment tools to measure and track their residents on a range of dimensions.

COLLAGE Developers

COLLAGE was initiated and developed by Kendal Outreach, LLC (an affiliate of The Kendal Corporation) and the Institute for Aging Research at Hebrew SeniorLife, in association with interRAI, a non-profit organization of researchers founded to improve the lives of elderly, frail or disabled persons through the use of quality assessment practices.  

Benefits of COLLAGE

COLLAGE members are better able to tailor health and wellness programs and services to their resident needs; make informed data-based choices about risk and level of care decisions; implement preventive programs and services targeted to specific campus-wide needs; develop resident-focused service plans; gather outcomes information to evaluate the effectiveness of their programs and services; and help residents age in place more gracefully.

COLLAGE and CARF/CCAC Accreditation

COLLAGE assessments enable CCRC members to collect accurate, complete, valid and reliable data on independent living residents that can be used for both individual service planning and organizational improvement. COLLAGE members believe these tools are valuable in meeting CARF/CCAC standards for measuring and managing performance.

COLLAGE and Aging in Place

With Federal pilots underway to move Medicaid clients out of nursing homes and into the larger community - to reduce costs and to respond to consumer preference - many in our field are beginning to realize that the tools required to meet their needs are not necessarily in place yet. COLLAGE is helping organizations and communities build an infrastructure to respond to this need now.

COLLAGE and Data for Decision Making

At the heart of COLLAGE is the use of data to drive the development of campus-wide health and wellness program and service operations. A comment from the Executive Director of a COLLAGE member is noteworthy: "My staff has been offering Community Based Services in our independent setting for years. I think they know as much as any staff could about meeting their needs. When they started using the COLLAGE assessment, it opened up a whole new way to organize their information for decision making. It gave them new tools to discuss issues with departments, family, administration, and community resources who residents/members might have been hiring privately. I heard ‘wow’ many times as they looked at new report possibilities to serve our residents through the continuum."

Data obtained through COLLAGE is submitted to a national data bank and consortium reports are made available to members. Through evaluation of consortium data, the combined expertise of Hebrew SeniorLife, Kendal, interRAI, and member CCRCs has the potential to significantly expand knowledge on quality of life issues for older people and to help CCRCs better allocate resources and support the independence of residents.

History and Impetus for COLLAGE

One of The Kendal Corporation's former board members, physician Knight Steel, who was also a researcher with interRAI, raised Kendal's consciousness at a board meeting several years ago when he asked, “How do you know that the programs and services you offer to residents on your respective campuses are effective and promote strong health and wellness outcomes?” He went on to say that nationally, communities don’t have a valid and reliable way to test and measure residential health and wellness, and that we can’t afford to assume that what we’re doing to manage it is appropriate, targeted and effective. The impetus for the development of COLLAGE came out of this conversation.

If you are interested in learning about membership, Read More.