Integrated interRAI Reporting System (IRRS) metadata

CIHI is moving to the Integrated interRAI Reporting System (IRRS), and it’s time to retire our legacy home care and long-term care systems

CIHI is excited to announce that IRRS will be the new standard and reporting system for long-term care (LTC) and home care data. This change is being made in response to stakeholder interest and in alignment with CIHI’s mission to provide comparable and actionable information to accelerate improvements in health care, health system performance and population health across the continuum of care. As a result, CIHI will decommission the previous reporting systems for home care (HCRS and HCRS-CA) by March 2025, and the reporting system for LTC (CCRS) by March 2026.

Please contact us at specializedcare@cihi.ca with any questions regarding this announcement.

Overview

The Integrated interRAI Reporting System (IRRS) was launched in 2019–2020. IRRS manages information captured with interRAI’s integrated suite of assessments at multiple points throughout a person’s encounter with an organization and across organizations and health care sectors. It houses comprehensive health information (demographic, administrative and clinical) from different care settings in a single reporting system.

IRRS currently supports the new integrated suite of assessments, including the following:

interRAI Contact Assessment (interRAI CA)
interRAI Home Care (interRAI HC)
interRAI Long-Term Care Facilities (interRAI LTCF)

The system optimizes the features of the integrated suite of assessment instruments, including

Common and standardized language across data elements and their coded values
Detailed items specific to individual care populations
The ability to complete longitudinal analysis within and across care settings

Using this kind of integrated approach makes it easier to follow a person’s health care information across settings, encouraging continuity of care and increasing the chances of improved health outcomes.

Data source

IRRS captures data from many types of organizations responsible for providing publicly funded health care services.

Nursing staff and other health providers use the interRAI LTCF to assess individuals in participating publicly funded resident care facilities, commonly known as nursing homes, personal care homes or long-term care facilities

Long-term care data submissions to IRRS come directly from facilities.

Home care staff and other health providers use the interRAI CA to assess all individuals served through screening or home care intake processes. They use the interRAI HC to assess and monitor the status of individuals in community settings.

Home care data submissions to IRRS will come from

Provincial or territorial ministries of health
Regional organizations (such as regional health authorities or community care access centres)

Data coverage

IRRS captures standardized, client-specific clinical, demographic, administrative and resource utilization information in a single reporting framework.

As of 2023–2024, the following provinces/territories submit data (partially or completely) to IRRS :

Prince Edward Island (interRAI HC)
Nova Scotia (interRAI LTCF)
New Brunswick (interRAI LTCF)
Ontario (interRAI HC)
Saskatchewan (interRAI LTCF)
Yukon (interRAI HC)

Implementation of the interRAI HC, interRAI LTCF and interRAI CA is underway in many provinces and territories.

Historical data coverage varies. Details are available on request. Please complete a data request form.

Data availability

As of 2024–2025, the following data is available in IRRS:

interRAI LTCF
interRAI HC

Data availability varies by province/territory.

Data elements

interRAI’s suite of instruments is built on a core set of assessment items (identical definitions, observation time frames and scoring) that are important in all care settings. Items specific to a particular care setting or care population are then added to this core item set.

These standardized instruments provide a common language to assess the health status and care needs of individuals. They also provide a rich data source for planning and quality improvement, including information on

Cognitive function
Vision
Psychosocial well-being
Continence
Health conditions
Skin condition
Treatments/procedures
Communication/hearing
Mood and behaviour
Physical function
Disease diagnosis
Nutritional/oral status
Activity patterns

In addition to the data elements, the interRAI instruments automatically populate several outputs or measures, including

Clinical Assessment Protocols used by clinicians to identify risk and support care planning
Outcome scales that summarize function in areas such as cognition, physical function and frailty/instability
The RUG-III case-mix methodology
Risk-adjusted quality indicators

These derived variables are also available on request.

More detailed information about the IRRS data elements, as well as the derived variables, can be found in our list of key resources below.

Data quality

CIHI ensures that the quality of the information in our data holdings is suited to its intended uses and that data users are provided with accurate information about data quality. Read more about our Data and Information Quality Program.

For further information regarding IRRS data, please contact us at specializedcare@cihi.ca.

Key resources

The following resources are publicly available:

The following resources are available to facilities and vendors that subscribe to IRRS:

Privacy impact assessment

Privacy impact assessments (PIAs) evaluate and address the privacy impacts of programs and systems.

Go to the Privacy and security page to view the PIA, which contains further information about the purposes, data elements and data sources for this data holding.

Contact us

For further information, please email

help@cihi.ca