Correlations between care users’ and the healthcare inspectorate’s ratings of the quality of care in long-term care homes

OBJECTIVES: Increasing emphasis is being placed on person-centredness as a quality requirement for long-term care (LTC). Although healthcare inspectorates value the importance of care users’ experiences, they struggle to address these experiences in regulatory practice. The aim of this study is to explore the correlations between care users’ and the healthcare inspectorate’s ratings of the quality of LTC in The Netherlands. DESIGN: The correlations between care users’ ratings from a public Dutch online patient rating site and the Dutch Health and Youth Care Inspectorate’s ratings of the quality of care were examined using Spearman rank correlations. The inspectorate’s ratings cover three themes: ‘attention to person-centred care’, ‘working towards sufficient and competent care staff’ and ‘focusing on quality and safety’. SETTING: Ratings of the quality of care were obtained for 200 LTC homes in The Netherlands between January 2017 and March 2019. These LTC homes had 6 to 350 residents (M=89; SD=57) and belonged to organisations with 1–40 LTC homes in total (M=6; SD=6). PARTICIPANTS: Publicly available anonymous ratings of the perceived quality of care by care users were extracted from the Dutch patient rating website ‘www.zorgkaartnederland.nl’. Care users’ ratings were available for the 2 years prior to an assessment by the inspectorate for 200 LTC homes. RESULTS: We found a weak, significant correlation between the mean care users’ ratings and the inspectorate’s aggregated scores for the theme ‘person-centred care’ (r=0.26, N=200, p(adj)<0.01); no other correlations were significant. CONCLUSIONS: This study showed only a weak correlation between care users’ ratings and ratings of the Dutch Inspectorate of the quality of ‘person-centred care’ in LTC homes. Therefore, it may be fruitful to intensify or innovate approaches to involve care users’ experiences in regulation to do them justice.