Project Title

Opting for Independence (OFI)

Community

Opting for Independence worked with older adults of varied incomes who wished to age in place but were experiencing health or social challenges in six Howard County, Maryland zip codes.

Goals

Opting for Independence was a partnership between The Coordinating Center, an experienced care management agency serving persons with disabilities, and the Howard County Office on Aging and its strong and effective Aging and Disability Resource Center (ADRC). The project’s purpose was to create an effective model that would help older adults find community resources that enable them to age in their homes or residences of their choosing by:

  1. providing person centered care coordination linked with community resources and Occupational Therapy services;
  2. demonstrating that a partnership between a care management entity and a local ADRC with expertise in aging services is replicable; and
  3. conducting interview projects with older adults to learn what helps them stay in the community.

Selected Accomplishments

Specific accomplishments of the Opting for Independence project include:

  • Successfully providing person-centered care coordination services with a high degree of consumer and caregiver satisfaction
  • Engaging the community in two case study projects:
    • Stair Masters and Stairlifts (conducted in 2011)
    • Resiliency in Howard County Older Adults (conducted in 2012)
  • Developing relationships with local physicians and decision-makers in government and raising their awareness of innovative approaches to aging in place
  • Building a strong, replicable partnership between a disability organization and an aging organization

Additional Products

Reports from OFI Case Study project:

Other

OFI was covered in local newspapers during their project period. Stories on the project in the Columbia Flier and the Howard County Times also appear on The Baltimore Sun’s web site. The links to the articles are:

CIAIP grantee The Coordinating Center also joined other organizations selected to participate in the Community-Based Care Transitions Program (CCTP) - a program created by the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to help community-based organizations and hospitals form partnerships to prevent readmissions after patients leave the hospital. They will join 47 existing CCTP sites (including CIAIP Atlanta grantee, ARC , which was one of the first chosen for this initiative). The Coordinating Center will collaborate with Bon Secours Hospital, Maryland General Hospital, University of Maryland Medical Center, and the Baltimore City Aging & Disability Resource Center on the West Baltimore Readmissions Reduction Collaborative (WBRRC) to coordinate care for patients primarily living in West Baltimore, a medically underserved region of the city.

Contact

The Coordinating Center
www.coordinatingcenter.org

Phyllis Madachy
Project Director
pmadachy@coordinatingcenter.org