Issue 6 April 2017 Welcome to the Spring 2017 C-CHANGE newsletter, bringing you the latest project-related news, summaries and upcoming events. The C-CHANGE project aims to deliver quality and cost-effective care across the range of complexity for those with advanced conditions in the last year of life. This programme of research will ensure that patients and families from all backgrounds and care settings receive the appropriate resources according to their individual needs.
Workstream 4:
EAPC 2017
Workstream 4 is a mixed methods study to test and validate a casemix classification for adult palliative care in the UK. We are collecting data longitudinally from patients, family and staff members on complexity of needs, outcomes and patient-level resource use through transitions between settings (hospital, hospice, community).
The C-CHANGE team is delighted to announce that the following abstracts have been accepted for the upcoming 15th World Congress of the European Association for Palliative Care (EAPC), taking place in Madrid from 18-20th May. If you are attending this conference, please drop by to view our posters and oral presentations:
We have been recruiting participants from 11 sites since December 2016 and another new site will be open in April 2017. 93 patients and 31 family members have now been successfully accrued. We have also started interviews with some patients and family members to understand their experience of transitions of care across settings. Study registration number: ISRCTN90752212
Parallel Session: Thursday 18.05.2017 Room N103 11:15 – 11:35: “Complexity and costs in Palliative Care: what patient-level characteristics drive resource use?” – Dr Fliss Mutagh Meet the Expert Session: Friday 19.05.2017 Room N105/N106 08:00 – 08:45: “A practical workshop on how to measure individual-level Outcomes with patients and families in Palliative Care” – Dr Fliss Murtagh Oral Presentations: Thursday 18.05.17 Room N107/N108 11.15 – 12.45: “What defines a model of palliative care? A multi-method study across the UK to determine a set of criteria to describe models of palliative care” – Suzanne O’Brien and Alice Firth Friday 19.05.2017 Room N117/118 16.45 – 18.15: “The relationship between patients’ views on the impact of palliative care and patient-reported outcomes using the Integrated Palliative care Outcomes Scale (IPOS)” – Cathryn Pinto Friday 19.05.2017 Room N104 16.45 – 18.15: “What casemix criteria best predict costs of palliative care provision in the UK? A casemix development study across palliative care settings” – Dr Ping Guo
For event information & enquiries:
csi.events@kcl.ac.uk 0207 848 5520 Missed a CSI seminar? Watch it now on our YouTube channel www.youtube.com/user/CSIKCL
Poster Presentations: Thursday 18.05.2017 Poster Set 1, “Recruitment to palliative care studies – how many are approached and how many consent?” – Paramjote Kaler and Alice Firth Friday 19.05.2017 Poster Set 2, number P02-084: “Should resource allocation be based on needs or outcomes? A national qualitative study of stakeholder perspectives” – Sophie Pask
Recent publications: Esther I Groeneveld, Brian J Cassel, Claudia Bausewein, Agnes Csikos, Malgotzata Krajnik, Karen Ryan, Dagny Haugen, Steffen Eychmueller, Heike Gudat Keller, Simon Allen, Jeroen Hasselaar, Teresa García-Baquero Merino, Kate Swetenham, Kym Piper, Carl Johan Fürst, Fliss E Murtagh. "Funding models in palliative care – lessons from international experience" Palliative Medicine, doi: 10.1177/0269216316689015 What we aimed to do: We wanted to report how palliative care is funded in different countries across the world. How we did it: We searched for published papers and for national policy documents about this topic. We also undertook expert consultations with experts from England, Germany, Hungary, Republic of Ireland, New Zealand, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United States and Wales. We restricted ourselves to these countries so as to include a range of different health systems, yet make the work feasible to complete within the time and resources we had available. What we found: There is considerable variation in how palliative care is funded in different countries. Payments to providers of palliative care services are rarely linked to population need and often perpetuate existing inequitable patterns in service provision. Funding is frequently from a mixture of charitable, public and private payers. In many countries, there is a major reliance on charitable funding to ensure palliative care is delivered. The basis on which providers are paid for services rarely reflects individual care input or patient needs; usually it is historical or dependent on what has been locally negotiated.
This has helped us understand more about how palliative care is funded, and where some of the strengths and limitations of different funding systems lie. Little is published on funding, so we have been able to contribute in a useful way. This paper has now been published online and can be accessed here (http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0269216316689015)
Staff Profile: Ka Man Yip Ka Man Yip joined the C-CHANGE team in January 2017 and is working as a Data Analyst
Contact Details Via email: pa_flissmurtagh@kcl.ac.uk Via telephone: 0207 848 5520 Website: www.csi.kcl.ac.uk/cchange
What did you do before you joined the CSI? Before joining the CSI, I worked as a Researcher in the Educational field in Hong Kong. This is the first time I have lived and worked outside my hometown, and I am excited by the opportunity to join the new environment and work place. I am really looking forward to the days I am in the CSI and the UK.
What is your role on the C-CHANGE team? My role in the C-CHANGE project is the Data Analyst. For this role I use the programme STATA to deal with the huge amounts of data that the C-CHANGE project is producing. One of the biggest challenges is to make the data clean and tidy so that we can make the best use of the dataset. This will help us to analyse the palliative care situation right now in the UK and seek trends that can provide us insights about palliative care in the future.
How have you found the project so far? The project is amazing, no matter the teammates or the contents. The team works well together and all of them are really nice – they have helped me adapt the new environmet a lot. The project consists of different levels and points of views about palliative care in the UK and I believe it will provide in deep and comprehensive analysis of palliative care funding situation of the UK.
Twitter: @CSI_KCL YouTube: www.youtube.com/user/CSIKCL This newsletter presents independent research funded by the National Institute for Health Research under the Programme Grants for Applied Research scheme (RP-PG1210-12015). The views and opinions expressed by authors in this newsletter are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the NHS, the NIHR, MRC, CCF, NETSCC, the NIHR Programme Grants for Applied Research programme or the Department of Health. Further information available at: www.csi.kcl.ac.uk/c-change