Databases Strengthen Long-Term Care Partnerships

The Community Partnerships for Older Adults program provided grants to eight community partnerships to develop and implement creative strategies for improving awareness about long-term care and supportive services systems. This brief examines three partnerships—Aging Atlanta, El Paso Successful Aging Through Long-Term Strategic Alliances, and the San Francisco Partnership for Community-Based Care and Support—with different levels of information technology expertise that designed databases to help improve communication among service providers. Even though the partnerships implemented databases, they failed to achieve communitywide utilization. However, the databases did enhance provider communications. Advice for others includes keeping the effort simple, involving potential users early on, and drawing on the experiences of others to avoid unnecessary and costly steps.