Empowering voices, transforming lives

How Alchemer helped Vital Research revolutionize
data collection in Minnesota’s assisted living facilities

Vital Research leveraged Alchemer’s flexible survey platform and automation capabilities to transform and scale their data collection efforts for Minnesota’s statewide Assisted Living Report Card giving residents and their families the information to make personal choices and providing facilities with insights as to where to focus improvement efforts.

For 2024’s Minnesota's Assisted Living Project, Vital Research visited the highest number of assisted living facilities ever and reached their project goals using Alchemer’s Survey and API capabilities.
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  • Over 1,700 assisted living facilities were eligible for the project
  • Conducted over 27,000 interviews with assisted living residents and their families across Minnesota
  • Increased survey engagement to 75%
  • Moved from paper collection to digital transformation — Resulting in a reduction in data processing errors and thousands of hours saved
  • Secure, accurate, and actionable data collected

About Vital Research

Vital Research, LLC, is a social science research and evaluation company specializing in aging and disabilities, education, healthcare, and community service. For more than 40 years, they’ve performed cutting-edge and community-driven research to help non-profit and government organizations measure their impact and make a difference. The Vital Research team is driven by curiosity and uses culturally responsive approaches to ask the questions that matter most, collect the right data, and deliver results that transform lives.

“Every data point represents an individual and what they think, what they feel and how they see the world and their view on it. We have an opportunity to impact their lives by analyzing their voices and translate it into something that will hopefully make their lives better.

— Dr. Harold Urman, President at Vital Research

About the study

Dr. Harold Urman’s words reflect Vital Research’s mission, to create vibrant communities by amplifying the voices of diverse populations through inclusive social science research and evaluation. This mission found its perfect application in Minnesota, one of the few states investing in comprehensive, statewide quality of life surveys of nursing home residents and their families and making the results publicly available. At the heart of this initiative is the Minnesota Department of Human Services (MN DHS) and its Nursing Home Report Card, developed in collaboration with the Minnesota Department of Health. This nation-leading resource that empowers people to make informed decisions when selecting long-term care facilities.

Four older adults are sitting and laughing in a cozy living room. One person uses a wheelchair. A potted plant and lamp are in the background, adding warmth to the scene. Large windows allow natural light to fill the room.

Vital Research’s partnership with the state of Minnesota started over 20 years ago with the creation of the Nursing Home Report Card. Developing, testing, and administering surveys to capture meaningful insights, the report card delivers quality ratings based on annual surveys assessing residents’ quality of life and family satisfaction. Vital Research has administered the annual nursing home surveys by hiring and training dozens of interviewers throughout the state to carry out in-person interviews with residents. Nursing Home facilities use these detailed reports from Vital Research to compare themselves against statewide and facility benchmarks. Families and residents rely on this research to find homes that truly fit their needs, leading to better care and greater peace of mind for families.

Following the success of their Minnesota Nursing Home Report Card, five years ago, MN DHS decided to launch a similar report card for assisted living facilities, once again partnering with Vital Research. However, with four to five times more assisted living facilities than nursing homes, the Assisted Living Repot Card project presented a much larger undertaking.

“You can’t do better unless you know what’s going on — The Vital Research surveys and data collected are the foundation of our Nursing Home and Assisted Living Report Cards.

— Teresa Lewis, Research Scientist at Minnesota Department of Human Services

Challenges

Digital efficiency

In the early days of the Nursing Home Report Card project, all data needed to be collected on paper, which led to inefficiencies in handling paperwork and data entry. Managing thousands of interviews across multiple interviewers with paper surveys posed significant risks to data privacy and accuracy, with human errors like lost forms and data entry mistakes from both interviewers and data entry personnel —not to mention the hours required to filter through and input paper survey data into digital systems. As their scale and scope grew, Vital Research transitioned from paper-based surveys to a fully digital, tablet-powered system.

This digital shift required user-friendly and secure survey software that allowed interviewers to conduct thousands of resident interviews on tablets. It also required training dozens of interviewers across Minnesota to master the tablet-based survey system, ensuring data collection was clean, actionable, accurate and gathered in a timely matter.

Navigating scale and complexity amid digital transformation

With the goal of surveying residents and their family members at over 1,700 assisted living facilities, the project demanded a streamlined and scalable approach. However, it was important to continue the structured, in-person resident interview approach that was so successful in nursing homes. Conducting in-person interviews is a crucial aspect of their research because it ensures that every individual’s voice is heard. This personal approach is also essential for capturing the full depth of each participant’s experience. For the assisted living family surveys, they also use online, paper, and phone interviews to maximize the response rate. Therefore, they needed to guarantee that all the feedback was accurate, secure, and seamlessly integrated.

Ensuring flexible and accessible survey participation for all assisted living residents

In the assisted living initiative’s first year, Vital Research covered only about 25% of Minnesota’s assisted living facilities, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the state’s interest scaling up the project more gradually, and the fact that facility participation was not yet mandatory. To provide a more all-inclusive view of Minnesota’s assisted living providers and ensure that every voice was heard across all populations, Vital Research needed survey software that was both flexible and accessible to all respondents. For instance, in assisted living facilities in particular, residents often require breaks or multiple sessions to complete an interview. However, Vital Research’s previous survey software lacked a pause-and-resume feature, complicating interview completion across multiple sessions and making it difficult to track progress and ensure accurate responses.

Amid all the complexities of launching the new program, they needed sophisticated yet user-friendly survey software that made data collection seamless.   

“Data is a critical part of this project – Alchemer allows us to collect data in real time, monitor and clean data in real time, and address any issues quickly.

— Colleen Ehatt, Quality of Life Research Manager at Vital Research

How Alchemer Helps

Vital Research previously relied on Alchemer to meet their survey design and data collection needs for the Nursing Home Report Card project. To bring those successes to the Assisted Living Report Card project, Vital Research trusted Alchemer to drive their data-gathering efforts, ensuring every resident’s voice was captured securely and efficiently.

Through Alchemer, Vital Research was able to design robust surveys, collect real-time feedback, and increase participant engagement with greater flexibility and accessibility, meeting their ambitious project goals.

How Alchemer Helps
Automated real-time data collection

As soon as a survey was completed, Alchemer’s system automatically triggered email notifications, enabling Vital Research to review responses promptly. This feature not only sped up the data verification process but also helped identify and address any emerging issues swiftly through the data-checking process. Additionally, through Alchemer’s API integrations, Vital Research monitored incoming data daily, quickly cleaned responses, and transferred results seamlessly into software like SPSS and Salesforce. This streamlined approach delivered high-quality insights across every survey session and allowed for prompt data analysis, which made it easy to integrate findings into their broader research workflows.

Automatically capturing responses online and integrating them directly into analysis software eliminated the risks of data errors and inaccuracies common with paper surveys. With added security measures, such as password protection, Alchemer further enhanced the process by verifying participants’ identities—safeguarding both the accuracy and confidentiality of the data collected. Residents and their families can feel confident that their survey responses are valid, secure, and actively contribute to meaningful improvements.

With Alchemer’s automated survey collection system, the project became nearly paperless. This transition to tablet-based data collection revolutionized the research process, saved thousands of hours and allowed them to check data with fewer people. As a result, Vital Research delivered faster, more current insights that drove continuous improvement that elevated the quality of care for residents.

These valuable insights are truly the foundation of the Nursing Home and Assisted Living Report Cards, providing trusted transparency for the public and long-term care providers. Through detailed facility-level reports, providers can see how their results compare to statewide results and other facilities. Many providers are committed to quality and strive to ensure their residents have positive experiences. By leveraging research insights to identify areas for improvement, nursing facilities have made a significant impact over their years of participation, with some successfully raising their ratings from one star to five stars. They expect to see similar results with the assisted living facilities.

How Alchemer Helps
Flexible and accessible survey methods

The combination of Alchemer’s automated systems and Vital Research’s human-centered approach proved transformative.  This past year alone, they successfully completed over 27,000 interviews with assisted living residents and their families, achieving an impressive 75% participation rate. They also broadened their scope to include inclusive feedback from assisted living facilities. 

Using digital surveys on tablets has helped Vital Research boost this engagement by streamlining survey design, testing, and distribution while making it easier for residents and family members to participate.  Alchemer offers an intuitive interface that is simple to learn and use for both survey builders and respondents. A key feature is the ability to preview how surveys will look on tablets while the survey is being built, which is essential since all interviewers use tablets. Accessibility is enhanced through features like ASL interpreters joining interviews via tablet video, as well as the option for language interpreters and audio or video support, allowing more participants to engage fully. 

Engagement can also be attributed to Alchemer’s advanced survey logic, which includes skip actions that allow interviewers to easily bypass irrelevant questions or navigate to the end of the survey once they’ve finished. Similar logic is in place to return to the beginning of the survey whenever interviewers need to review their responses with Quality Assurance Mentors (QAMs). In the Minnesota report card projects, Vital Research uses QAMs to collect inter-rater reliability data and provide coaching to interviewers. Additionally, the platform allows interviewers to seamlessly pause and resume surveys without the burden of starting over, ensuring no data is lost and the process remains flexible for participants, especially those requiring more than one interview session.  

Choosing long-term care can be a difficult and costly decision, as individuals must not only determine the services and support they need but also decide where they want to call home. Residents appreciate the chance to connect with interviewers, share their experiences in a supportive space, and feel genuinely heard. When they can see the direct impact of their feedback, it fosters a sense of pride and a commitment to continuous improvement. By blending essential human elements with technology, Vital Research delivered more accurate and comprehensive assisted living resident and family data, empowering Minnesotans to make informed choices based on what matters most to them.

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