Dates: 1 October 2023 - 31 March 2025
Funder: National Institute for Health and Care Research
Project description
This evaluation is about how digital or electronic records are being used when adults are receiving care in their own homes or in care homes. Care records are written notes about someone’s health and wellbeing and the treatment or support they have been receiving. Organisations that provide care for adults are being encouraged to record information digitally, instead of on paper. This change in the way things are done is encouraged because it can mean information can be shared more easily between health and social care services and used to improve people’s lives.
Aims
The questions we are asking in this evaluation cover the following areas:
- why organisations have or have not started to digitise their care records
- people’s expectations about how digitising care records will change things
- people’s experiences of moving from paper to digital care records and using features of digital records like family portals
- what people see has changed as a result of going digital and whether they feel the changes have made their lives better or worse and in what ways
- whether different groups of people with different life experiences experience going digital similarly or differently and the ways in which that matters to people’s lives
- what the economic impacts of digital care records are for social care providers.
Methods
To answer our questions, we will find out about what is happening in home care and care homes in different parts of the country. We think that it is useful to look at places that have different experiences of going digital. So, we will include organisations that have not yet started going digital, are in the process of going digital, or went digital a year or more ago.
We will use a multiple case study approach, which means we will look in detail at the process of going digital within several care provider organisations. This will help us understand how the context shapes people’s experiences. TOur research will include interviewing senior leaders in organisations that provide care for adults and gathering the perspectives of people who draw on care, their families and friends and care workers. Researchers (including members of the public who want to work with us as ‘peer researchers’) will visit the organisations to collect this information.
Three people working in the sector and three people drawing on social care have been recruited to an Evaluation Advisory Network for this study. They have provided feedback on proposed research methods and were involved in helping to recruit different groups and settings for the evaluation. We will recruit more people to this network from the sites. The network will continue to provide guidance as the research progresses and support us in sharing our learnings.
Further project information
Principal Investigator: Juliette Malley (LSE) and Joanne Westwood (UCLan)
Research team: Nicola Farrelly (UCLan), Catherine Henderson (LSE), Cath Larkins (UCLan), Wagner Silva-Ribeiro (LSE), Martha Snow (LSE), Nicole Steils (KCL)
Regions: South Cumbria and Lancashire ICS, Nottingham and Nottinghamshire ICS, SW London ICS, SE London ICS, Dorset ICS.
Countries: England
Keywords: digitisation, electronic records, data sharing, adult social care, care providers