Testing a Minimum Data Set in Care Homes in England
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Title of the research: Testing a Minimum Data Set in Care Homes in England (Work Package 5 of the DACHA study) Title of the overarching project: Developing research resources and minimum data set for care homes' adoption and use (DACHA)
IRAS ID
311711
Contact name
Claire Goodman
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Hertfordshire
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 6 months, 1 days
Research summary
Structured approaches to data in long-term care are well established in other countries. The Minimum Data Set (MDS) in the United States is mandated for all residents in receipt of medical funding for nursing home placement. The International Resident Assessment Instrument (interRAI), initially derived from the MDS, is now in use in multiple countries and is mandatory in several, including Canada, France, Belgium, and Switzerland. Using these datasets has been reported to enable more coordinated patient care, to support governance and audit, to ensure appropriate remuneration for services, and to enable service design, planning and policy decisions.
The DACHA study (Developing resources And minimum data set for Care Homes’ Adoption and use) is a programme of research to evaluate internationally used minimum datasets and compare these to the data already routinely collected and available for care home residents, before developing and testing a minimum dataset which will suit the care home sector in England. The study consists of five packages of work, the first four of which have informed the development of a prototype MDS.
The fifth work package is a mixed-methods longitudinal pilot of the MDS, including a protocol for integrating these with native data from NHS and social care databases to form the full dataset, for older adults living in care homes in England. The study will assess the feasibility of collecting data directly from care homes with digital care records and matching this to routinely collected health and social care data to populate a complete MDS, assess the quality of the MDS data, evaluate the usefulness of the matched MDS data to stakeholders, and assess potential barriers and facilitators to wider implementation of the MDS. The study will recruit residents from 60 care homes, with data in the MDS extracted and integrated with routine data at baseline, 4 and 9 months.
REC name
London - Queen Square Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
22/LO/0250
Date of REC Opinion
7 Jun 2022
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion