JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

With population aging, family caregivers provide increasingly complex and intense care for older adults and persons with disabilities. There is growing interest in developing community-based services to support family caregivers. Caregiving occurs around the clock and caregivers face challenges in accessing community-based services at convenient times due to the demands of care. Web-based resources hold promise for accessible real-time support. CareNav™, a caregiver resource information system, is an online platform designed to support interactive universal caregiver assessment, a record of client encounters, development of a care plan, tailored information and resource content, access to online caregiver resources, capacity to track service authorization and contracts, and secure communications. The assessment includes both the care recipient and caregiver needs and health conditions, current resources and priorities for support, information and referral. In 2019, the California Department of Health Care Services funded the 11 nonprofit California Caregiver Resource Centers to expand and improve family caregiver services and enhance CRC information technology services.

Objective:

The purpose of this paper is to describe the state-wide implementation of the CareNav™ system using the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research as an organizing structure for synthesizing the evaluation.

Methods:

This mixed-methods study used two major approaches to evaluate the implementation process. The first was a survey of all staff who completed training (n=82), and the second involved in-depth qualitative interviews with key informants (n=35). We initially analyzed interview transcripts using qualitative descriptive methods, then identified sub-themes and relationships among ideas, mapping the findings to the CFIR framework.

Results:

We present findings about the outer setting, inner setting, characteristics of the intervention, characteristics of the staff and the implementation process. Critical elements to success were leadership, communication, harmonization of processes across sites, and motivation to serve clients in more accessible and convenient ways.

Conclusions:

The findings have implications for technology deployment in diverse community-based agencies who aspire to enhance virtual services.