Publication - Research and analysis

Care home data review

Published: 27 April 2023
Directorate: Population Health Directorate
Topic: Health and social care

Summary of the background to, progress of, and future aims of the Care Home Data Review, begun in 2022.

Introduction

The Care Home Data Review (CHDR) is a collaboration between Scottish Government, Public Health Scotland and Care Inspectorate, with the aim of improving the care home data landscape.

Initial Outputs from the Review

The first phase of the review is now complete and a summary report from the review has been published. The report provides a brief summary of the feedback received during the review, presents a number of recommendations for improvement, and sets out the next steps for taking forward implementation of the recommendations.

In addition, in order to improve the transparency around the current data landscape, the review produced a mapping of all the national data collections relating to care home data. This brings together information on all national data sources and provides a flow diagram showing the link between data collections and outputs.

Background information

The Office for Statistical Regulation’s 2020 report on Adult Social Care Statistics highlighted a number of issues with the current care home evidence base, relating to data quality, coherence and gaps. It noted that, whilst there are a number of data producers, the data landscape can be confusing and does not currently provide the insight it could to meet the needs of stakeholders. In addition, current data collections place a significant burden on care home data providers but do not necessarily collect information that benefits them.

In response, Scottish Government, Public Health Scotland and the Care Inspectorate jointly conducted a review of the care home data landscape. The review is considering improvements around the content, quality and frequency of current data collections, and alternative methods of data collection, and aims to ensure a coherent suite of data collections, reduce the burden on data providers and meet the existing and emerging needs of data users.

Key elements of the review are to:

map the current care home data landscape and consider improvements around the content, quality and frequency of current data collections, and/or alternative methods of data collection, to ensure stakeholder needs are met as comprehensively and efficiently as possible
reduce the ask of data providers and ensure we both balance the need for evidence with respondent burden and maximise benefit for providers
identify and prioritise actions to address any key gaps in care home data
establish a network of data providers/users and processes for ongoing stakeholder engagement to understand emerging needs/issues

Stakeholder Engagement

Discussions have been held with a wide range of stakeholders, including with individual organisation and presenting at existing stakeholder group meetings.

Workshop – 14 March 2023

In March 2023, we held an online workshop which had over 110 people in attendance from a range of data providers and users. The workshop summary document summarises the issues raised during the 12 breakout sessions, together with possible solutions suggested by participants. These issues and suggested solutions are quotes or paraphrases of workshop participants’ views, so do not necessarily reflect the views of the Scottish Government or our delivery partners, nor are they an indication of practicality. Also, as the workshop was only one source of information, the eventual solutions implemented may be wider than these. However, everything noted here will still be considered fully.

Visualisations

We had a visual notetaker, Clare Mills, in attendance at the whole-group session and two of the breakout sessions, who produced a visualisation of the data challenges and a visualisation of the key themes for improvement.

Questionnaire

In addition, an online questionnaire for data users and providers was open for comments from late October 2022 to May 2023. The questionnaire asked for current uses of data, issues and ease of data provision/use and asked for potential improvements. The summary of questionnaire responses shows the results of the questionnaire analysis.

Further information on data sources

In addition to the mapping laid out above, a summary of data sources on adult social care and care homes, together with suggestions of priority development areas for this data can be found in the Mapping National Adult Social Care and Care Home Data Sources in Scotland report, published in September 2022.