BIMS by Conversation: How Gia Runs Assessments

The same BIMS items, asked by Gia on a call, scored and written to the record, with the clinician's review in between.

How does Gia administer the BIMS?

The BIMS is a short instrument. Getting it done on time, on every resident, by someone who asks it the same way each time, is the hard part.

The cost of a late or missing BIMS is not the item itself. It is an assessment window that closes with a blank, an MDS the coordinator cannot complete, and a survey finding that the cognitive status was never assessed. The sequence below is built to close the window on time.

What the manual BIMS costs a unit

A nurse has to find the resident awake, alert and willing. The interview takes a few minutes. The scoring, the documentation and the walk to the next room take longer. Multiply by the census and the assessment window.

When the window is tight, assessments get rushed. When staff turn over, they get asked differently. The score moves for reasons that have nothing to do with the resident.

Language adds a day. A resident who answers in Korean or Russian needs an interpreter, and the interpreter needs scheduling. The BIMS for that resident slides to the end of the window and sometimes past it.

What stays the same

The items. The scoring. The clinician's judgment about what the score means for this resident.

Gia does not change the instrument. She asks the BIMS items as written, in conversation, and scores the answers. The clinician reviews the result and decides. A check-in is a screening conversation. Gia is clinical decision support, not a diagnosis.

The clinician also keeps the right to repeat it. If a resident sounded unwell on the call, or the score moved more than the clinician expects, one click sends Gia back the next day. The second result sits beside the earlier one, and the clinician decides which one the record should carry.

What changes

Who asks, and when. Gia calls by phone or video at the scheduled time. If the resident does not answer, she retries. She asks in any of 44 languages, in the language the resident answers in.

The same call carries a 40-second speech check-in that measures 2,500 speech biomarkers. The clinician gets the score and, beside it, how the resident sounded compared with last time.

Documentation changes too. Each attempt is recorded, including the missed ones. The DON can see which residents were reached on the initial call, which needed a retry, and which were never reached and need a nurse at the bedside. That list used to live in someone's head.

The resident's experience changes least. She answers a call, or looks at a face on the unit's tablet, and has a short conversation with someone who waits for her answers. The items are the same ones a nurse would ask. The difference is that they get asked on the day they are due.

ADL, IADL and cognitive screening on the same call

Initiate Assessment is not limited to the BIMS. The clinician chooses the BIMS, an ADL and IADL review, or a cognitive screening, and Gia administers it in conversation. Results arrive in under two minutes with Proactive Decision Actions. Options, never orders.

A Digital Human® who looks and listens on video, or a voice on a landline. The resident needs nothing but a phone.

Caregiver check-ins add the view from home or from the family. What a daughter noticed on Sunday sits beside what the resident said on Monday and how the resident sounded. The clinician reviews all three together.

What lands in the chart

After the clinician's review, the scored assessment, the clinician's note and the assigned follow-up write back to PointClickCare, Epic or your EHR, dated and attributed.

The MDS coordinator finds the BIMS in the window it was administered. The DON can see which residents were assessed, which were missed after retries, and who reviewed each one.

The record also carries the clinician's options. Each result arrives with Proactive Decision Actions and the clinician's choice is written beside the score. A surveyor reading the chart sees the assessment, the decision and the follow-up in sequence, with a name on each.

Where to start

Choose one unit and one assessment window. Have Gia administer the BIMS for the residents due, and have the DON compare completion and documentation with the previous window.

See how post-acute and senior living teams use Gia, then book a working session.