Quality management by result-oriented indicators: Towards benchmarking in residential care for older people, Policy Brief, June, 2011

Policy Briefs are a publication series providing a synthesis of topics of research and policy advice from researchers at the European Centre for Social Welfare Policy and Research.

The project ‘Quality Management by Result-oriented Indicators – Towards Benchmarking in Residential Care for Older People’ had the following objectives:

• To collect, sift and validate result-oriented quality indicators at the personal care home organizational level, based on experiences in selected member states. Apart from the quality of (nursing) care, a special focus was given to resident‘quality of life’. Economic performance, leadership issues and the social context complemented the domains used to frame indicators that serve to define, measure and assess overall quality in care homes.

• To investigate and gain experience in methods on how to work with and train care home managers to work with result-oriented indicators and deal with challenges.

This Policy Brief provides information about the project team’s approaches and project results. The project results were discussed with more than 130 experts from different fields (providers, regulators, policy-making, client organisations, etc.) during the Final Conference in Brussels from 3-4 November 2010. Highlights from the discussion are presented in the second part of this Policy Brief.

http://www.euro.centre.org/data/1306242771_99752.pdf

Review of Staffing and Care Standards for Long-Term Care Homes

In consultation with seniors' groups, nurses' organizations, physicians, community coalitions, unions, and members of residents' and families' councils, the Ontario Health Coalition came to a consensus set of key recommendations regarding quality of life and care in long-term care homes.

This document is the result of this consultation:
http://www.web.net/~ohc/sharkey.pdf