Healthcare professionals in the lead
The Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport has made 2.25 million euros available for the project "Care professionals get started" of the Academic Workshop Ouderenzorg Limburg and professional associations Verenso and V&VN. The project, which will last four years, will make data on the quality of care more accessible to care providers and clients in geriatric care. The project reduces the bureaucratic burden for research, improves feedback to practice, and connects different types of data to create a more complete picture of the quality of elderly care. For the research, not only data from the region will be used, but also from care organizations outside Limburg.
Less bureaucracy and more specific improvements
The project should make it easier to use existing care and treatment records for research. Currently, care institutions often keep separate registrations of care quality indicators. One example is the annual registration of quality indicators as part of the National Prevalence Measurement of Healthcare Quality (LPZ) conducted by the AWO-L. This should soon be less or no longer necessary. Much of the data is already registered within clients' files and a correct link can take a lot of work off their hands.
According to Prof. Jos Schols, project manager and professor of geriatrics within the AWO-L, registration is still a major stumbling block for care professionals t start working with quality information themselves: "At the moment many care professionals find the separate registration of all kinds of quality indicators for research mainly a bureaucratic burden. Especially since they often hear very little about the results and because they are still used far too little as a concrete basis for activities aimed at improving care.
The goal is to use research results for learning and improvement activities that actually support care teams and clients. Care professionals are in the lead in the new AWO-L project: they indicate in what form they would like to see the results. With guidance from the researchers, the professionals themselves will get to work with the indicators: how can they use them in their environment and practice to bring about real improvements in care?
A more complete view of quality in elderly care
Finally, it will be examined whether it is possible to use data from various registrations on the quality of care, work and finances to paint a more complete picture of the quality of care for the elderly. Within the AWO-L there is a great deal of knowledge about the quality of basic care from the annual LPZ measurements. The new project will also examine how these data can be better linked to non-numerical data, such as the experiences of clients or family members with the care provided and data on employee satisfaction. In this way, this information can also be included in quality improvement on the work floor.
How will this help practice? "In this way, healthcare professionals will be better supported in using quality information themselves and improving care. It will become clearer what a true 'best practice' is in which situation, says Schols. "Results on certain quality indicators are provided with context because they are supplemented with other important data, such as the experiences of clients and relatives. This allows professionals to better address the cause of any problems". So we are looking for tailor-made solutions, so that healthcare institutions and professionals can get to work with the data themselves.
The project 'Healthcare professionals in the lead' is carried out together with the professional associations Verenso and V&VN. Other important partners in the project are: landelijke Stuurgroep Kwaliteitskader Verpleeghuiszorg, Samenwerkende Academische Netwerken Ouderenzorg (SANO), Vilans, LOC Waardevolle zorg, Patiëntenfederatie Nederland and Burgerkracht Limburg.