Mortality among community elderly care service patients
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Mortality of patients following discharge from a community based Intermediate care team
IRAS ID
166687
Contact name
Bharath Lakkappa
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Northamptonshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 6 months, 30 days
Research summary
Intermediate Care Team (ICT) has been an integral part of healthcare for older people with physical and mental illnesses in Northamptonshire. Increasingly more patients referred to ICT are extremely frail and have complex co-morbidities. Research shows that about 33% of hospitalized patients and 36% of elderly patients attending hospital emergency departments die within 12 months. Role of ICT is to prevent many of these hospital admissions and to facilitate effective discharge from acute hospitals, allowing people to access required acute clinical care in their own homes. Although follow-up mortality data are known for hospitalized patients, such data do not exist for patients referred to community based service such as ICT. Hence, purpose of this study is to inquire in to 1 and 2-year mortality of patients referred to Northamptonshire ICT. Results will help us identify training needs of ICT staff; inform ICT of type of skill mix required; inform commissioners and providers to develop and fund appropriate service delivery model; identify other providers with whom ICT needs to work collaboratively to provide care closer to home; and to identify further research areas in this group of patients who constitute a “virtual hospital”. The study will look at 12 and 24 month mortality of a cohort of patients referred to Northamptonshire ICT from 11/04/2010 to 10/04/2011. Syst1 (a computer programme used for clinical records) database of ICT referrals for the said period will be used to identify patients and to determine the gender, age and the time of death in days and months from the date of discharge. No direct patient contact will be made. No additional information from case records will be extracted. All data will be anonymized.
REC name
East Midlands - Nottingham 1 Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
15/EM/0060
Date of REC Opinion
18 Feb 2015
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion