Frequently Asked Questions About Study Participation

Which home health care agencies are eligible and how many will participate?

Agencies have been randomly selected from Medicare-certified home healthcare agencies across the nation. We used scientific sampling procedures to select the agencies based on geographical location and ownership. Approximately 1,500 agencies from the 50 states, D.C. and Puerto Rico will be invited to participate. Our invitation is addressed to the staff member who is likely in charge of infection prevention and control at the agency (e.g., administrator, clinical manager, infection preventionist, quality improvement manager).

What is involved in participation?

Participation involves completing the study questionnaire, which takes approximately 15-25 minutes, depending on if the respondent was at the agency during the pandemic. The questionnaire can be completed on the paper booklet that was mailed to the agency or online. If preferred, the questionnaire is also available in Spanish. There are questions about infection prevention and control and COVID-19 experiences. Your agency’s experiences are valuable because they represent experiences of other agencies like yours. All data will be confidential, and no agency or individual will be identified in any report. Once we receive your completed questionnaire, we’ll send a $100 Amazon gift card, as a thank you!

What are the benefits of participation?

The goal of this study is to improve our understanding of how home healthcare agencies responded to the pandemic and will help generate recommendations to strengthen agencies’ infection prevention and control capacity and preparedness to more effectively respond to the current and future infectious disease crises. While you may not personally benefit from participating, the knowledge we gain from the study will help your agency and others like it around the country.

Who should I contact if I have additional questions?

If you have questions or would like to request the study materials in Spanish, please contact the research team at: nursing_hhstudy@cumc.columbia.edu(link sends e-mail)  or 855-HH-STUDY (855-447-8839).

Why are you doing the study?

Currently, little is known about how infection prevention and control policies and processes have evolved during the pandemic. Through this study, we hope to identify similarities and differences from our previous study findings about infection prevention and control policies and processes at home healthcare agencies prior to the pandemic and identify best practices.

What does study participation involve?

Participation involves a member of our study team conducting individual telephone interviews with up to 3 staff members knowledgeable about infection prevention and control policies and procedures at your agency and who have been employed for at least 1 year. Each interview will last approximately 45 minutes and will be audiotaped for transcription purposes. All interviews will be confidential; individual participants and agencies will not be identified in any analyses or reports.

Why are you contacting us? We're very small!

We're interested in multiple perspectives for this study. Your staff’s perspectives are likely similar to those at other small agencies; these perspectives are important to capture particularly about future infection prevention guidelines in home health.

What are the benefits of participation?

While there is no direct benefit to your agency, we understand you and your staff’s time is valuable. Therefore, we will provide an honorarium of $100 per participant (up to $300 per agency) in the form of a gift card. This honorarium will be given either directly to the participants or to the facility/agency, based on institutional policy/preference.

Next steps and who should I contact if I have additional questions?

To discuss participation and confirm eligibility, we can schedule a short informational call at a time that is convenient for you. If your agency is eligible to participate, we will ask you to identify up to 3 personnel. We will then schedule the telephone interviews at times that are convenient for those personnel. For further information, please contact the research team at: 855-HH-STUDY (855-447-8839) or nursing_hhstudy@cumc.columbia.edu