Case study 1
Developing a patient cohort through FARSITE
Managing the needs of older patients through integration of health and social care is a key basis of current policy, but research is needed to assess which models of care provide the greatest benefits.
The NIHR Health Services and Delivery Research funding stream funded a range of studies in this area (refs).
CLASSIC was a large study of an integrated care programme designed to improve the health and social care of older people (over 65’s) with long-term conditions living in Salford.
One of the most important parts of the research was to develop a cohort of older people, who could be used to track the impact of the programme.
The study team worked with Greater Manchester CRN and used the FARSITE tool to recruit to the study, which is a tool developed by North West e-Health and used by general practices to run searches over anonymised health records and identify the right patients for studies.
Using a fairly simple process, FARSITE identified the patients and practices wrote out to them and asked them to get in touch if they were interested in taking part in the cohort. They were asked to complete surveys over the lifetime of the study (24 months).
Over 4,000 patients took part, and the cohort was used to assess the impact of the integrated care programme, as well as supporting evaluation of a new telephone coaching service, and providing data to explore issues of patient safety and health literacy