Care Home Data Review Summary Report

Background

There are currently over 1,000 care homes for adults in Scotland, operated by a mixture of public, private and voluntary / not for profit providers. These care homes use a wide range of systems and processes to generate, capture and record data, from paper-based records to a variety of different electronic Management Information Systems (MIS). In addition, there are a large number of local and national organisations collecting, analysing and publishing care home data. In many cases the data collected by the different organisations can be very similar and often overlap.

The methods for collecting data are different across organisations, and there are often differences in the data definitions and the timeliness of data collected. Furthermore, the large number of organisations collecting data for multiple purposes, means that the information governance around any potential data sharing is highly complex.

This fragmented data landscape, with a multitude of data systems, processes, definitions and collections, along with limited data sharing, has led to significant burden on data providers and a confusing data landscape. Whilst current data collections meet some of the purposes for which they were established, despite the large volume of data collected, the current data landscape does not fully provide the timely and insightful data for all purposes required.