Project summary:

Long-term care services, in particular care homes, have been badly hit by the COVID-19 pandemic but to varying degree across countries. Between 0 and 80% of all cases of COVID-19 deaths have occurred among care home residents, while it is currently under-researched how home care users and LTC staff are affected. There is also considerable variation in the timing, sequencing and content of measures applied, on a general societal level, as well as in those applied in the LTC sector specifically, such as care home lock-downs and access to PPE and testing.

There is urgent need for policy makers and LTC provider organizations to learn from the emerging evidence, not the least in Sweden with comparably high death rates in society as a whole and in the LTC sector. Therefore, the aim of this scoping review is to identify and learn in a systematic way how older LTC users especially but also care workers and whole provider organizations are affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and the measures introduced. The review will focus on different measures and their effect on disease spreading and mortality among users and staff, as well as the effect on wellbeing and Quality of Life among users. When possible, the review will consider variation related to gender, class, ethnicity, and region in user outcomes.

We will map the emerging body of evidence, identify research gaps, and make recommendations for future research. The review is used also to inform six case studies (D, DK, ES, N, S, UK), presenting a time line of measures introduced and infection and mortality rates in LTC. In comparison to the review, this will have the country as a focus and will provide a more in-depth understanding of the relations between measures and outcomes, which will allow us to report on best practices and knowledge gaps.

Project summary:

The Mc-COVID 19 project is set to analyse the socio-sanitary co-ordination procedures in the context of institutionalized older-age care (age group that appears particularly vulnerable in this epidemic context), in Spain as well as in the rest of the EU-15. This study focuses on the articulation of resources between health and social policies, and aim to contribute to improve the effectiveness of the decision-making process and crucial aspects in the fight against the pandemic. To better understand what happened in these centres and facilitate policy learning, this study identifies the difficulties faced by institutional actors and nursing homes’ managers between January and August 2020. To this end, the research team conducted 25 in-depth interviews with managers in such centres (directors, administrators, and medical supervisors) in various Spanish regions (Comunidades Autónomas). In addition, the research group interviewed high-ranking officials responsible for both social services and public healthcare at the central and regional levels, and representatives of the trade unions and the employers’ associations of the nursing homes. Furthermore, the team examined documents issued by governmental and independent sources, together with the results of a survey elaborated by the Institute for the Older-age and Social Services (IMSERSO) of the Ministry of Health. Findings aim to be useful to inform other public policy sectors involved in crisis-related situations.