Case study:

11 May 2010

Gold Standards Framework in Care Homes Programme (GSFCH)

Key points

The Gold Standards Framework (GSF) for Community Palliative Care has for more than seven years been helping to improve care for people nearing the end of their lives in the community.

It is now being used by about a third of primary health care teams in the UK.

The GSF for Care Homes was developed and modified from the GSF primary care model to optimise the organisation, communication and proactive planning for people in the last years of life in care homes.

Its aims are to improve quality of care for residents as they near the end of their lives, to improve the collaboration with GPs and specialist palliative care teams and to reduce crises and hospital admissions.

Based on the principles of GSF to ‘identify, assess and plan care’ and using modified versions of the same seven key tasks, it now incorporates additional specially developed tools and resources.

These include using an identification, needs-based coding and advance care planning processes, assessment tools, educational resources and a minimum protocol for the dying stage, which for many leads on to use of a care pathway for the dying such as Liverpool Care of the Dying Pathway.

The programme has been used by almost 400 care homes, with studies confirming a demonstrable effect in improving the quality of care, restructuring patterns of working and reducing hospital admissions and deaths. It is now being run as a comprehensive three-stage quality assurance programme. An accreditation process is being developed in partnership with Help the Aged.

For more information, visit the GSF website