Conclusions - Call to Action - 10/10

Thank you for your interest in our work to discuss the topic, "Long-term Care - At what cost, to whom? Understanding the Costs of Institutional vs. Home-based Long-term Care".

We are sending out this tenth of ten (10/10) short articles written from our Scoping Review project funded by Strategy for Patient Oriented Research Evidence Alliance (SPOR EA). The Scoping Review looked for evidence-based research on the topic of cost accounting in long-term care, specifically seeking research on the cost-effectiveness of home-care versus assisted living facilities for individuals requiring additional support (frail elders with complex needs).

In this tenth article we declare our call for action to improve long-term care and caregiving outcomes in the future. The Scoping Review provided a path forward for developing a methodology for research design that would enable collecting and comparing evidence-based cost accounting data across diverse settings. The Family Caregiving provided a demonstration of how the proposed cost accounting framework developed in the Scoping Review could be applied to home-based long-term care operations. The Group Discussion highlighted the issue of healthcare system dependence on an invisible workforce providing unaccounted infrastructure.

Our call to action is comprised of three approaches that can be implemented concurrently: community engaged research priority setting; research design; and developing an initial pilot study research proposal.

We hope to inspire interest in fostering momentum to host a series of community engagement events. These events would lead development of research priority setting in the area of long-term care, cost accounting, and advancing the use of evidence to support and sustain home-based caregiving operations.

Please feel free to contact me, Jenny Arntzen, at jenny.eacaregivinginvestigation@gmail.com to share your thoughts, experience or ideas for developing research methodogolies to study cost accounting in long-term care, including home-based settings.

We look forward to leading innovation to improve efficiency and efficacy of long-term caregiving across all caregiving settings.

Email Craig.Mitton@ubc.ca or jenny.eacaregivinginvestigation@gmail.com to recommend additions to our mailing list.

On behalf of the project team:

Jenny Arntzen, PhD, PMP, Family Caregiver - Patient-Partner Co-Lead

Craig Mitton, Professor, Centre for Clinical Epidemiology and Evaluation (UBC/C2E2)

Gavin Wong, PhD, RRT, Research Scientist, Evidence synthesis, UBC/C2E2

Neale Smith, MA, MEDes, Research Coordinator, UBC/C2E2

Nora Fripp, MPH, Research Scientist, Economic Modelling, UBC/C2E2  

Smita Roy, MSc Student, Graduate Research Assistant, UBC/C2E2

Affiliation: University of British Columbia

Geographic Health Region: Vancouver Coastal Health