INTEREST GROUP SESSION - SYSTEMS RESEARCH IN LTC: WE-THRIVE CONSORTIUM: QUALITY OF CARE IN LONG-TERM CARE: ITS MEASUREMENT AND INFLUENCING FACTORS

摘要

To measure the performance of health systems helps to improve quality of care by pointing out what works and what does not, and guiding improvement efforts in the right direction. Quality of care can be measured from a variety of levels and perspectives, be it structures, processes and outcomes, as well as resident experience. This symposium on the one hand shows a variety of possibilities to measure nursing home quality of care, including care deficiencies (structure and processes), resource use (structure), quality indicators (outcome) and the individual experience. On the other hand, it discusses both influencing factors on quality of care in the first two presentations and measurement issues in the last two ones. The first presentation examines care deficiencies in assisted living facilities, showing differences in quality based on facility size and 24-hour nursing availability. The second presentation addresses resource use, which increases significantly with cognitively impaired and functionally dependent residents. In the third presentation, the importance of including experienced quality of care from multiple perspectives as an additional measurement source is elaborated, and the fourth presentations addresses the challenges of having good data quality when measuring quality indicators with routine assessments. The development and measurement of meaningful quality measures is an ongoing challenge and it is important to consider influencing factors both to support the interpretation of the results and to identify possible intervention points to improve quality of care.