A case study exploring the effectiveness of an innovative “5Q Care Test” to determine whether patients with complex needs require health or social care

Authors
Sue Crossman
Ana Ohde
Peer-Reviewed Article
November 2019

This resource is a study evaluating an alternative in-hospital assessment to determine the need for continuing care after discharge.

  • In the UK, a long and complicated Continuing Health Care (CHC) assessment uses a checklist to determine whether the required care after a hospital discharge falls into the category of “health” or “social,” with implications for funding.
  • The CHC is a source of financial pressure for the NHS, and, because of its length, is often distressing to patients. There is therefore a need to consider alternatives.
  • The “5Q Care Test” is a much shorter and simpler method to determine whether patients requiring intensive support after discharge need “nursing” or “social” care.
  • In this study, the hospital discharge team was trained to use the 5Q Care Test instead of the CHC assessment. The results showed benefits in terms of quality of patient discharge and cost‐efficiencies, suggesting that the 5Q Care Test is a viable alternative.

Please note: depending on your institutional credentials, there may be a fee to download the full-text version of this article.

Posted to The Playbook on
Level of Evidence
Promising
What does this mean?