DACHA project

Methods being used …

To address what is already known, a series of reviews of the evidence will identify what information is important when measuring residents’ health and wellbeing and how that information can be shared and used by different practitioners and organisations. This will include a review of existing research databases and completed care homes research to learn what works and the evidence about resident groups available from these studies. These findings will be compared with what care home residents, family members and care home staff involved in providing day-to-day care identify as information that is important. Next, we will test how to combine information which is already routinely collected for health and social care with new information to achieve consistent ways of organising data for the benefit of residents and also researchers. We will consult with stakeholders to develop a schedule of questions and linked outcome measures that could be the basis of a national database. Working with IT specialists we will test these questions and the feasibility of asking them in practice.  Throughout the study we will work with all interested parties (commissioners, care home owners, residents and their representatives, NHS staff and the regulator, researchers and data management and privacy experts) to develop a consensus on the minimum content of shared records, guidance on how to standardise the way it is recorded and outcomes measured and linked to existing routinely collected data. We will test the feasibility of using the shared care record in geographically dissimilar areas that are already working to integrate health and social care data. Throughout the study, we aim to create new ways of working and doing research in and with care homes, so that the outputs benefit not only researchers, but also residents