Evaluating the wellbeing of patients at the Jean Bishop Integrated Care Centre
The study found that the Integrated Care Centre significantly improved the overall wellbeing of older people living with frailty at 2-4 weeks, and that this improvement was sustained 10-14 weeks after the intervention. In contrast, the control group experienced a decline in wellbeing at both 2-4 weeks and 10-14 weeks.
Explaining the primary outcome of the study, Professor Murtagh said, “We measured wellbeing using the Integrated Palliative care Outcome Scale (IPOS), which is a measure of symptoms and concerns that matter to people with advanced illness.
“We were thrilled to discover that people's wellbeing improved after receiving care at the Jean Bishop Integrated Care Centre”
“We also found that the improvement in people's wellbeing was still sustained three months after their visit to the Centre.”
Dr Dan Harman, a Consultant Community Geriatrician at the Centre, alongside colleague Dr Anna Folwell, were integral to developing the service model and leading the service.
“These are really exciting findings; we can now demonstrate the benefits of holistic community-based care"
He said of the findings, “Through a robust and continuous evaluation of the frailty service, we have consistently demonstrated that our collective approach has a sustained improvement on system outcomes. However, the PACE study has added further evidence as we can also now demonstrate the benefits that patients report through receiving this holistic community-based care.”
Dr Folwell said, “The in-depth interviews with patients and carers by the researchers, gave us early insight into what was working well in terms of communication before and after the assessments, and what could be improved. This helped us in continuous improvement of the service and would have been more challenging without the collaboration with the research team.”
While the study also measured quality of life as a secondary outcome, the improvement in quality of life was small.
Professor Murtagh explained, “Quality of life is influenced by many external and social factors, such as living circumstances and situation. It is hard, therefore, to change quality of life. In contrast, the IPOS measure is specifically designed to capture the health-related symptoms and issues of individuals with advanced disease.
“Our study confirms that the IPOS measure is very valuable in assessing the impact of care on people’s wellbeing and health status and provides important insights into the effectiveness of the Integrated Care Centre's approach to caring for individuals living with frailty.”