International Conference on Evidence-based Policy in Long-term Care, 5-8 September 2012
In the current economic climate much attention is focused on the costs of long-term care and means by which rising demand can be funded. However, as is increasingly widely acknowledged, if we are to use resources to best effect it is important that we have an understanding of outcomes. This allows us to identify what we achieve with our resources and evaluate whether new innovative approaches are cost-effective. The quality adjusted life year (QALY), designed for economic evaluation, has provided a powerful tool, enabling comparisons across a wide range of health care interventions. But much of long-term care, including personal assistance and care homes, is social care, which compensates for the effects of health states on individuals rather than achieving changes in those health states.
The presentation will describe the basis for, the development, and growing use of the Adult Social Care Outcome Toolkit (ASCOT). ASCOT includes a variety of approaches to measurement of social care outcome, including a preference-weighted utility index, which is intended to facilitate the generation of a QALY for social care. The development of the measure generated English general population values and the instrument is now included in the English annual Adult Social Care Survey, providing benchmark data about users of long-term care. There is growing international interest in a measure that potentially could allow comparisons of social care related quality of life and outcomes across a wide variety of long term care systems.