Christine Mueller appointed to National Academy of Medicine committee

Christine Mueller, PhD, RN, FGSA, FAAN, professor, senior executive associate dean for Academic Programs and Long Term Care Professor in Nursing, was appointed to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Committee on the Quality of Care in Nursing Homes.

The Committee on the Quality of Care in Nursing Homes will examine how our nation delivers, regulates, finances and measures quality of nursing home care, with particular emphasis on the long-standing challenges brought to light by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The committee will develop a set of findings and recommendations to delineate a framework and general principles for improving the quality of care in today’s nursing homes, delivering high quality care in a consistent manner, and ensuring the safety and well-being of residents and staff in nursing homes. The committee may also consider the relevance of their findings and recommendations to other long-term care settings, if applicable.

Mueller's career has focused on improving the care of elders living in nursing homes, specifically on factors that can influence quality of nursing home care such as nurse staffing, care delivery systems, and the role of the nurse and nursing home culture change. She worked on the project team for the HCFA Multistate Nursing Home Case-Mix and Quality demonstration project that developed the Minimum Data Set (MDS) Plus (now the MDS 3.0), quality indicators, and the Resource Utilization Group case-mix classification system for nursing homes. She was a team lead for the state of Minnesota to design a case-mix classification system for Minnesota nursing homes and a set of quality indicators that have been used for quality payment incentives and a public report card.