Work packages

Lead partner: PSICOST (Spain)

Tasks: Coordinate the project and manage its administrative and technical aspects.

Deliverables: Interim and final reports (both technical and financial). Final version of the eDESDE-LTC.

Description of the work
The administrative manager will carry out the overall coordination of the consortium and the general project management. This will include general internal, financial and legal administration. The project leader (L. Salvador-Carulla) will supervise these activities, with the help of the project administrator and the legal/finance officer. The internal management will include the organisation of project meetings and the reporting and dissemination of minutes of all meetings to all partners and to the Executive Agency for Health and Consumers (EAHC). The administrative manager will coordinate organisation of project meetings, collect minutes and signed list of attendants. She also will keep contact with accountant and administrative officers at EAHC. The financial components of general management.

Lead partner: LSE (UK)

Task: Undertake dissemination actions that will contribute to promote and communicate the existence, advances and results of the project to interested fora.

Deliverables: Dissemination Plan

Description of work
They will be useful to improve the sustainability of project results so that they can continue to exist and to be applied beyond the end of the EC contract.

Transferability has been demonstrated by our group in the application of ESMS to the assessment of services for disabilities in Spain (DESDE). We have also demonstrated capacity to develop, implement and link health/social service websites in Spain which have been later adopted by companies in this field. The previous experience and refinement of methods support the goals of producing a European electronic version of DESDE applied to LTC. We expect to link it to the EU Health Portal and the EU Observatory on Health Systems. Also sustainability will rely on previous successful experience on sustainability of ESMS.

Once the project is approved, a preliminary executive summary and report will be delivered on-line and disseminated to national health authorities, main European users and umbrella organisations in this area. Scientific and country-specific technical reports will be then prepared.

Lead partner: UNIVIE (Austria)

Task: To prepare the Quality Assurance Plan (QAP) for project evaluation.

Deliverables: Quality Assurance Plan

Description of the work
The partner procedures for follow-up and internal/external evaluation will be specified in the QAP. The Plan will define quality objectives, procedures for reporting and quality control and review of deliverables. The QAP will include a description of the leadership, key processes (pre-kick-off tasks, kick-off, development of the system –classification, instrument and website; pilot and analysis of results and final report), and outcomes for the care system, the users and the society. It will identify facilitating agents and monitor innovation and training. Outputs of the QAP will include checklists and corrective actions. The project will distinguish between "process" quality and "product" quality. The first one concerns the organisational and administrative aspects. The latter refers to the quality of the scientific outputs of the project and the policy relevance of the deliverables.

Internal reports to describe the development of the project will be prepared at the end of each of the main actions. Internal reports will be also distributed among partners before any project meeting.

The final evaluation of the project will be made by an external agency/professional that will be in charge of detecting weaknesses and suggesting actions for improvement. We prefer to rely on an external evaluation as we consider it more objective and with the possibility to better contribute to the improvement of the project.

Lead partner: PSICOST (Spain)

Tasks: To develop and to adapt a coding system and a schedule for standard classification of main types of care and description of services of LTC to frail population (DESDE-LTC) in 6 EU+EFTA-EEA countries with different care systems.

Deliverables: The DESDE-LTC European Classification and Coding System and the DESDE-LTC Instrument

Description of the work
A framing document and a preliminary draft of the coding system and the schedule were produced and discussed with the partners at the kick-off meeting based on coding of disability services in Spain (DESDE). At the kick-off a session was devoted to standardisation of integration of information from different countries. Two Skype conferences with country rapporteurs were scheduled before running the nominal groups and another one will be scheduled after every run to check for problems and doubts in integration of country information. Conceptual translation and transcultural adaptation was made to six languages (English, Spanish, German, Norwegian, Slovenian, and Bulgarian) and delivered to national nominal groups (duration of each session 120 min; 7-10 participants, 2 sessions during 1st year). The nominal groups were undertaken by health and social care professionals, providers, representatives from user organisations and decision makers. Nominal Group national reports will be reviewed and comments merged into a 2nd version which will be reviewed again by national nominal groups. An international working group made by partners developed Beta 1 version (October 2009) of the DESDE-LTC. The Beta 2 version is expected to be ready by XXXX 2010. The final version will be produced after the pilot phase and a national acceptability analysis are completed.

Lead partner: Obra Social Caixa Catalunya (OSCC) (Spain)

Task: Design and develop a website on LTC for frail population (eDESDE-LTC).

Deliverable: eDESDE-LTC website

Description of the work
This website was based on previous experience in this task by partners; mainly, OSCC (www.fundaciocaixacatalunya.org), PSICOST (www.proyectodesde.com and www.madrid.org), and the participation of LSE at the European Observatory of Health care systems. The beta version of this website, in English, went online early February 2010. After the pilot testing of the instrument (see WP4), the website will be revised and updated. Links will be developed in every country by partners in this project, and links to national, regional and local health websites related to LTC for frail population.

The website maintenance will be carried out by OSCC and PSICOST. OSCC will maintain the website after the end of the project. A sustainability plan will be incorporated in the final report. The website will provide general information on the project, the coding and classification system, the instrument, the training package, links to other websites, the demonstration in Bulgaria and in Spain, among other relevant information.

Lead partner: PSICOST (Spain)

Task: To develop the eDESDE-LTC training material for the coding system

Deliverable: eDESDE-LTC Training Package

Description of the work
PSICOST will coordinate the preparation and production of the training programme on the coding system. The course content will be developed by PSICOST based on previous training experience with ESMS and DESDE. A site course on training for trainers will be organised at project meeting 2 in Barcelona (Mo12) The teaching material will be prepared and a trainers’ guide will be available in this website. The guide for future trainers of the coding system will consist of a reference manual with vignettes and teaching session suggestions and instruments to improve class participation. Content materials will be produced in English.

The applicability and quality of the training will be tested at the site course. A final assessment of the training package will also be carried out. According to the training results, the materials will be revised by PSICOST in cooperation with the project partners. The following domains will be reviewed: comprehension of the text, adequacy of the language, level of difficulty requested, teaching material used, development of the learning and evaluation activities. These aspects will be discussed at the 3rd Project Meeting (Jerez, 2010). The results will be incorporated into the final report.

Coordinator: PSICOST (Spain)

Tasks: To carry out international pilot testing of the eDESDE-LTC in Bulgaria and Spain

To test the usability of eDESDE-LTC in order to improve the semantic interoperability of the coding of services for long-term care.

Deliverables: eDESDE-LTC Final Version

Description of the work
An ecological approach will be followed to pilot the coding system and the instrument. At year 1, a health geographer in cooperation with national partners provided a definition, general description of main characteristics, comparability and appropriateness of the pilot areas in Sophia (Bulgaria) and Jerez (Spain) (DESDE-LTC section “A” LINK). This report was presented at the 2nd Project Meeting in Barcelona where the adequacy of both areas was discussed and agreed with all partners. The pilot phase will start in 2010 after the training course. The pilot will be monitored by PSICOST.

All the services for the target population identified in every area by the group will be contacted by the regional agencies of health and social services and they will be invited to participate in the study. A questionnaire will be filled by the reference person at every service and a project researcher will contact him or her for checking the items and coding the main types of care (MTC). Services with unclear codes will be visited on-site and doubts will be discussed with the coordinator team before a definite code is provided. When the regional mapping of LTC services is completed and checked by regional agencies, it will be presented to the national nominal group to identify errors and to introduce final comments. Problems identified during the assessment will be reported in a document to the project working group which will make amendments and present a new version to the national nominal groups (3rd National Nominal group) based on pilot experience. A final version of the coding system and the instrument will be available online at the end of the project.

Usability includes: Descriptive validity, feasibility and impact analysis (the latter has been included in the evaluation work package). At the first interim project meeting a usability questionnaire was presented by PSICOST and discussed by the partners. A final version of the usability questionnaire incorporates the feedback received. At the end of the pilot phase we will test the descriptive validity with partners plus service research experts from partner organisations. Descriptive validity will include face validity analysis, content analysis and discriminant analysis (similar services are included in the same code and different services in different codes). The usability analysis will be carried out using a version of the PSICOST usability questionnaire in over 100 interviews. PSICOST questionnaire is based on the 3 dimensions model (Andrews, 1994): Practicality, acceptability and applicability plus efficiency ("cost-benefit" of the three different groups will fill it: 1) Service research experts from partner groups and pilot (15 approx.), national stakeholders participating in the nominal groups at the end of the 3rd Nominal Group (60 approx), and other experts and stakeholders at the end of the International Conference (25 approx).