Advanced Planning for Home Services for Seniors (APHS) in Four Cities in the U.S. Midwest, Northeast, and Southwest, 2014-2015

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The Advanced Planning for Home Services for Seniors (APHS) in Four Cities in the U.S. Midwest, Northeast, and Southwest, 2014-2015 study contains data collected in the APHS Randomized Controlled Trial of the PLAN YOUR LIFESPAN (PYL) online tool. Through partnerships with seniors, senior community groups, area agencies on aging, and homecare agencies, the Advanced Planning for Home Services for Seniors (APHS) study sought to conduct a randomized controlled trial of the PLAN YOUR LIFESPAN tool to determine subject understanding of home care services, advanced health planning, and other patient-centered outcomes. The trial was conducted from October 2014 to September 2015, in Chicago, Illinois, Fort Wayne, Indiana, and Houston, Texas. The APHS study is made up of a two-armed (attention control and intervention), parallel, randomized controlled trial. Participants were first given a baseline questionnaire, and then underwent randomization to either arm of the trial. Individuals were randomly assigned to one of two interventions in this trial: attention control or the PLAN YOUR LIFESPAN tool. If randomized to receive the PLAN YOUR LIFESPAN tool, subjects were introduced to the PYL tool and given instructions on how to use it. The PLAN YOUR LIFESPAN tool is a Web-based planning tool that provides information for seniors related to advanced health planning for home services in specific content areas of: hospitalizations, falls, Alzheimer's, dementia, as well as communicating with others. Participants randomized to the attention control group went through an educational website on activities relevant to seniors. The educational website was sponsored by the National Institute on Aging and has comparable design and layout to PYL but does not include information about advanced planning. A minimum of 15 min and a maximum of 45 min was allotted for navigating either website. After the allotted time, participants were administered an immediate post-test survey. One and three months after the face-to-face encounter, staff contacted participants over the phone to complete a follow-up survey. The aim of the assessments given to participants was to determine whether the PYL web based tool affected the following behaviors relating to about future preferences for hospitalizations, falls, and Alzheimer's/memory loss: Planning behavior and communication of plans Perception of importance of planning Confidence in accessing home services These outcome measures were assessed at baseline, one month, and three months. Demographic information collected in this study includes sex, age, race, ethnicity, marital status, living arrangements, health status, education, employment, income, and religion.