Over the next 18 months a team of researchers from the University of Bremen will carry out a study of 2,000 inhabitants of 50 care facilities in Baden-Württemberg and Brandenburg. The aim is develop straightforward indicators for measuring the quality of in-patient care, thus making it possible to make a more easy comparison of care facilities. The team is led by Professor Stefan Görres from the Center for Ageing and Care Research and Professor Heinz Rothgang from the Center for Social Policy.
Checks for mobility and self-reliance
The indicators take into account aspects of individual mobility, the degree of patients’ self-reliance, and scientific perceptions of the quality of care. Altogether, 15 indicators will be tested in the course of the study, which has been designed by Dr. Klaus Wingenfeld from the University of Bielefeld and Dr. Dietrich Engels from the ISG Institute of Social Research and Social Policy in Cologne acting on behalf of the German Ministry for Health, Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women, and Youth.
How do patients perceive the quality of the care they receive?
According to the Bremen project coordinator, Mathias Fünfstück, one of the most important indicators is decubitus, or bedsores. How well are patients protected from this? Then there is the question of falls with potentially serious consequences, and problems of weight loss and coping with pain. One of the most important aspects of the study is that the care facilities in question are treated equally “If a home has more bed-ridden patients than another, the statistics on the quota of decubitus patients must take this into account: Otherwise it wouldn’t be possible to make fair comparisons”, Professor Rothgang explains. Fünfstück adds, “To ensure the documentation is suitably aligned in this respect we will be working together with selected care personnel in each of the in-house facilities surveyed”. We are also including a software developer in the team. The plan is to come up with a practice-tested means for measuring the quality of care. “The study breaks new ground by focusing on the quality of results, which means listening to what patients say about how they are cared for, taking into account their state of health, and how they feel”, says care expert Professor Görres. “Until now these things have played a more subordinate role, the focus of quality assurance in nursing care facilities tending to be rather on structures and internal procedures.”
Topics of high social significance
The top-level study has been commissioned by the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Funds and national associations representing the providers of social security and nursing care. This is the third time within a short space of time that University of Bremen experts have been called in to advise on matters of such pressing social and political significance. Görres: “We are already working on a project dealing with mobility in old age”. And only quite recently, Rothgang and Fünfstück brought a project to a successful close that formed the basis for reformulating the definition of “in need of care”.
