Clustering health and social care need in MLTC

Aim

To explore provider and patient perceptions of care delivery by clusters based on health and social need in Multiple Long-Term Conditions.

Why is this important?

There are 15 million people in England living with two or more long-term physical, mental or infectious diseases, known as Multiple Long-Term Conditions (MLTC). Current care is mostly focused on medical treatment (e.g. blood pressure, cholesterol). This means that social needs like mobility, housing, finances, and isolation are given less attention. Treating physical health and social need together through integrated care could provide better support for the varied and individual needs of people with MLTC. However, health and social care systems are not set up to easily deliver integrated care to the whole population. ‘Clustering’ or grouping together people with similar health and social care needs could allow care providers to make quicker and better decisions on how to meet people’s needs.

Our team already has funding to identify clusters based on health and social care need using electronic health and social care records. Our early results have identified 4-5 MLTC clusters. We now need to find out how these clusters could be used in practice to deliver integrated care and what resources (or interventions) are needed to support a change in care delivery. Seeking patient and care providers views at this early stage will ensure that new interventions are more likely to be used in practice and succeed in improving support for people living with MLTC.

What will we do?

We will use our team’s expertise to conduct research that will help us to find out what patients and care providers need from a new intervention. We will:

Talk to care providers in focus groups about their priorities and concerns about care delivery by MLTC clusters

Talk to people living with MLTC (and their relatives or carers) in semi-structured interviews to find out how well they identify with MLTC clusters

Draw up a plan for how a new intervention could support care providers to deliver better, integrated care based on these clusters

PPIE

The project was shaped through conversations with several charities (eg; CarersUK, AgeUK), our PPIE contributor and the departmental PPI forum. We have acted on feedback and will continue to seek input on all aspects of project design, data collection, analysis and results sharing.

Next steps

Findings will be made available to people with MLTC, and those who work and make decisions in health and social care to push forward conversations about creating an intervention to support integrated care delivery. We will co-host an event with our PPI contributor; share results, discuss implications and publicise findings through journals, conference presentations, blogs, and social media. We will use findings to make a case for further funding that will allow us to create the intervention.

Amount awarded: £63,468