INTERACT stands for Interventions to Reduce Acute Care Transfers. It is a quality improvement program designed to improve the early identification, assessment, documentation, and communication about changes in the status of residents in skilled nursing facilities.

The goal of INTERACT is to improve care and reduce the frequency of potentially avoidable transfers to the acute hospital. Such transfers can result in numerous complications of hospitalization, and billions of dollars in unnecessary health care expenditures. It includes clinical and educational tools and strategies for use in every day practice in long-term care facilities.

Here is the link to the INTERACT Training for Emergency Services:

http://www.healthcarefornewengland.org/providers/nursing-home/#tool

Then select “INTERACT Training for Emergency Services”

The training is about 12 minutes in length and covers the new acute care transfer process between a participating nursing home and hospital.

• Not all nursing homes are part of this initiative so EMS will find that some homes will still be using the W-10 and other documents during their acute care transfers
• The nursing homes that are using the red envelope as part of their new acute care transfer process will seal the red envelope and have a set of transfer documents for the EMS service so they will not have to open the envelope
• The rollout date to begin using the new acute care transfer process and the red envelope is August 31, 2015.
• The entire red envelope should be handed to the ED staff either at triage or in the ED room as the patient is being transferred from the stretcher to the bed
• The red envelope is to be used only for acute care transfers between participating nursing homes and hospital – they should not be used for other types of transfers
• There will not be a W-10 as part of the transfer documents – the front page of the INTERACT transfer form along with the residents’ face sheet meet the Department of Health Public Health Code requirements