Effective Healthcare Support to Care Homes
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Effective Healthcare Support to Care Homes
IRAS ID
226389
Contact name
David Challis
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Manchester
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 9 months, 0 days
Research summary
Are different types of healthcare support for care homes associated with different outcomes for care home residents?
Over 375,000 older people in England live in care homes. Most of these individuals have multiple and complex needs and many are in the last months of life. Nevertheless, the healthcare support that care homes receive from GPs, district nurses, geriatricians, pharmacists, palliative care staff and specialist care home support teams varies greatly and more than half of homes cannot access all the services they require. Furthermore, although evidence suggests that such support can benefit residents and save money, relatively little is known about the best ways to structure and deliver this.
An earlier study (a survey of care home managers) undertaken by the research team has collected information on the healthcare services provided to care homes across Greater Manchester. This has allowed the research team to describe and classify the different sets of healthcare support that care homes receive in terms of their access to different professionals, the activities they undertake and how helpful their support is perceived to be. The current study will now link this information to (anonymised) routinely collected data about three key indicators of quality care: the number of unplanned (emergency) hospital admissions; the ability of care homes to support care home residents at the end-of-life; and the number of emergency ambulance call outs to care homes. This will enable the research team to move beyond the simple description of services to investigate their association with these important resident outcomes.
This research is funded by the National Institute for Health Research School for Social Care Research and will end in April 2019.REC name
North West - Greater Manchester West Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
18/NW/0574
Date of REC Opinion
7 Aug 2018
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion