Background
We aimed to understand urgent and emergency care pathways for older people and develop a decision support tool using a mixed methods study design.
Objective(s), study design, settings and participants
Work package 1 identified best practice through a review of reviews, patient, carer and professional interviews. Work package 2 involved qualitative case studies of selected urgent and emergency care pathways in the Yorkshire and Humber region. Work package 3 analysed linked databases describing urgent and emergency care pathways identifying patient, provider and pathway factors that explain differences in outcomes and costs. Work package 4 developed a system dynamics tool to compare emergency interventions.
Results
A total of 18 reviews summarising 128 primary studies found that integrated social and medical care, screening and assessment, follow-up and monitoring of service outcomes were important.
Forty patient/carer participants described emergency department attendances; most reported a reluctance to attend. Participants emphasised the importance of being treated with dignity, timely and accurate information provision and involvement in decision-making. Receiving care in a calm environment with attention to personal comfort and basic physical needs were key. Patient goals included diagnosis and resolution, well-planned discharge home and retaining physical function. Participants perceived many of these goals of care were not attained.
A total of 21 professional participants were interviewed and 23 participated in focus groups, largely confirming the review evidence. Implementation challenges identified included the urgent and emergency care environment, organisational approaches to service development, staff skills and resources.
Work package 2 involved 45 interviews and 30 hours of observation in four contrasting emergency departments. Key themes relating to implementation included:
intervention-related
staff: frailty mindset and behaviours
resources: workforce, space, and physical environment
operational influences: referral criteria, frailty assessment, operating hours, transport.
context-related
links with community, social and primary care
organisation and management support
COVID-19 pandemic.
approaches to implementation
service/quality improvement networks
engaging staff and building relationships
education about frailty
evidence.
The linked databases in work package 3 comprised 359,945 older people and 1,035,045 observations. The most powerful predictors of four-hour wait and transfer to hospital were age, previous attendance, out-of-hours attendance and call handler designation of urgency.
Drawing upon the previous work packages and working closely with a wide range of patient and professional stakeholders, we developed an system dynamics tool that modelled five evidence-based urgent and emergency care interventions and their impact on the whole system in terms of reducing admissions, readmissions, and hospital related mortality.
Limitations
Across the reviews there was incomplete reporting of interventions. People living with severe frailty and from ethnic minorities were under-represented in the patient/carer interviews. The linked databases did not include patient reported outcomes. The system dynamics model was limited to evidence-based interventions, which could not be modelled conjointly.
Conclusions
We have reaffirmed the poor outcomes frequently experienced by many older people living with urgent care needs. We have identified interventions that could improve patient and service outcomes, as well as implementation tools and strategies to help including clinicians, service managers and commissioners improve emergency care for older people.
Future work
Future work will focus on refining the system dynamics model, specifically including patient-reported outcome measures and pre-hospital services for older people living with frailty who have urgent care needs.
Study registrations
This study is registered as PROSPERO CRD42018111461. WP 1.2: University of Leicester ethics: 17525-spc3-ls:healthsciences, WP 2: IRAS 262143, CAG 19/CAG/0194, WP 3: IRAS 215818, REC 17/YH/0024, CAG 17/CAG/0024.
Funding
This project was funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Health and Social Care Delivery Research programme [project number 17/05/96 (Emergency Care for Older People)] and will be published in full in Health and Social Care Delivery Research; Vol. 11, No. 14. See the NIHR Journals Library website for further project information.
