Professional Summary
Dr. Fries's current research in long-term care has three principal components. First, Fries is one of the primary developers of resident classification systems to measure nursing home case mix -- the intensity or quantity of care provided to individuals. Fries is the originator of the concept of Resource Utilization Groups (RUG-III), a case-mix system for nursing home residents, used for Medicare payments to US nursing homes and Medicaid payments in half of the states. He also designed the Medicaid payment systems for New York and Pennsylvania. He is currently leading the task analysis of the national project to revise RUG-III and another to refine a case-mix system for psychiatric hospital care, also to be incorporated into Medicare's PPS. Second, Fries is a co-designer of the National Resident Assessment Instrument (RAI). The RAI's use is congressionally mandated, to assess all residents in virtually all nursing homes in the US. In addition to its designed purpose to improve care through care planning, resident-level assessment has applications to the measurement of quality, development of quality norms, and the evaluation of interventions, regulations, and payment incentives. He maintains at the IoG a database of over 12 million RAI assessments for epidemiological and policy research and a Michigan database linking nursing home and home care data with billing information and vital statistics. Fries is also working with several states to rationalize eligibility for long-term care and set policy. Fries is active with the Michigan Department of Community Health on methods to predict if elderly need state-sponsored institutional or home care services. Third, Fries is the President of interRAI, a 28-nation consortium of researchers to use resident assessment and case mix to compare and improve care of elderly and disabled persons in institutional and non-institutional settings. Assessment systems have been developed for nursing homes, home care, palliative care, post-acute care, assisted living, inpatient and community mental health. These instruments have already been translated into over a dozen languages and have been adopted as the national instrument for Iceland, multiple Canadian provinces, Hong Kong, Estonia, etc. The interRAI instruments and RUGs move towards developing a common language for long-term care.
Courses Taught
HMP689: Seminar on Issues of Long-Term Care Policy and Administration
Syllabus (PDF)
Education
Post-doctoral Fellow, Operations Research, Columbia University, 1973
Ph.D., Operations Research, Cornell University, 1972
M.S., Operations Research, Cornell University, 1971
B.A., Mathematics, Columbia College, 1967
Research Interests & Projects
Brant Fries's research effort have been both to develop methodology and to apply it to the field of long-term care. The methods he develops help us to understand the delivery of long-term care, with the multiple purposes of assuring quality, designing effective payment systems and regulation, improving operational efficiency, and enabling effective financing and policy decisions. Together they have significantly changed long-term care practice and regulation in the US and abroad.
Selected Publications
Search PubMed for publications by Brant Fries >>
Gray, L., Ariño-Blasco, S., Berg, K., Bernabei, R., Carpenter, I., Finne-Soveri, H., Fries, B. E. (2010). interRAI Acute Care (AC) Assessment Form and User's Manual (Version 9.1) interRAI.
Smith, T. F., Steel, K., Fries, B. E., et al. (2010). interRAI Palliative Care (PC) Assessment Form and User's Manual (Version 9.1). interRAI.
Jones, R. N., Hirdes, J. P., Poss, J. W., Kelly, M., Berg, K., Fries, B. E., Morris, J. N. (2010). Adjustment of Nursing Home Quality Indicators B M C Health Services Research, 96.
Morris, J. N., Berg, K., Björkgren, M., Declercq, A., Finne-Soveri, H., Fries, B. E., et al. (2010). interRAI Community Health (CHA) Assessment Form and Manual. interRAI.
Morris, J. N., Fries, B. E., Bernabei, R., et al. (2010). interRAI Thuiszorg (HC) Beoordelingsformulier en Gebruikershandboek interRAI.
D'Souza, J.C., James, M.L., Szafara, K.L. & Fries, B.E. (2009). Hard Times: The Effect of Financial Strain on Home Care Services Use and Participant Outcomes in Michigan. Gerontologist, 49(2), 154-165.
Gray, L.C., Berg, K., Fries, B.E., Henrard, J-C., Hirdes, J.P., Steel, K. & Morris, J.N. (2009). Sharing clinical information across care settings: The birth of an integrated assessment system. BMC Health Services Research, 9:71.
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