Specialist healthcare services for UK care home residents: a latent class analysis

Hargreaves, Claire; Tucker, Sue; Hughes, Jane; Hays, Rebecca; Challis, David

Abstract

Aim: To identify discrete approaches to specialist healthcare support for older care home residents in the UK and to estimate their prevalence. Background: Internationally, a range of new initiatives are emerging to meet the multiple and complex healthcare needs of care home residents. However, little is known about their relative effectiveness and, given their heterogeneity, a classification scheme is required to enable research staff to explore this. Method: A UK survey collected information on the funding, age, coverage, aims, staffing and activities of 64 specialist care home support services. Latent class analysis (LCA) was used to allocate the sample into subgroups with similar characteristics. Findings: Three classes were identified. Class 1 (55% of sample) contained services with a high probability of providing scheduled input (regular preplanned visits) and support for all residents and a moderate probability of undertaking medication management, but a low probability of training care home staff (‘predominantly direct care’). Class 2 (23% of sample) had a moderate/high probability of providing scheduled input, support for all residents, medication management and training (‘direct and indirect care’). Class 3 (22% of sample) had a low probability of providing scheduled input, support for all residents and medication management, but a high probability of providing training
for care home staff (‘predominantly indirect care’). Consultants were more likely to be members of services in Class 1 than Class 2, and Class 2 than Class 3. Conclusions: LCA offers a promising approach to the creation of a taxonomy of specialist care home support services.
The skills and knowledge required by healthcare staff vary between classes, raising important issues for service design. The proposed classification can be used to explore the extent to which
different organisational forms are associated with better resident, process and service outcomes.

Citation

Hargreaves, C., Tucker, S., Hughes, J., Hays, R., & Challis, D. (2019). Specialist healthcare services for UK care home residents: a latent class analysis. Primary Health Care Research and Development, 20, Article e132. https://doi.org/10.1017/s1463423619000586

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jul 27, 2019
• Online Publication Date: Sep 16, 2019
• Publication Date: Sep 16, 2019
• Deposit Date: Sep 23, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Sep 23, 2019
• Journal: Primary Health Care Research & Development
• Print ISSN: 1463-4236
• Electronic ISSN: 1477-1128
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 20
• Article Number: e132
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/s1463423619000586
• Keywords: Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health; Care Planning
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/2648622
• Publisher URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/primary-health-care-research-and-development/article/specialist-healthcare-services-for-uk-care-home-residents-a-latent-class-analysis/58D5436FB22498AAB48F35716E9EA95C
• Additional Information: Copyright: © The Author(s) 2019; License: This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.