Covid-19 and lack of linked datasets for care homes
Barbara Hanratty, Jennifer Kirsty Burton, Claire Goodman, Adam Gordon, Karen Spilsbury
Abstract
Residents of care homes are centre stage in the covid-19 pandemic for all the wrong reasons. Home to vulnerable people with complex needs, these settings should have been an obvious focus and priority in pandemic planning. 1 Almost half of newly admitted residents in the UK are transferred from hospitals, creating a resident population with wide ranging needs spread across 450 000 beds in almost 11 000 homes. 2 3 This is more than double the number of beds in NHS hospitals, 3 but unlike NHS facilities most homes are privately owned, with residents responsible for some or all of the costs of their care. Yet as covid-19 spread across the UK, minutes suggest that the government's Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) discussed care homes only twice in the first five months of 2020.