Evaluation of bottom-up interventions targeting community-dwelling frail older people in Belgium: methodological challenges and lessons for future comparative effectiveness studies

BACKGROUND: Optimizing the organization of care for community-dwelling frail older people is an important issue in many Western countries. In Belgium, a series of complex, innovative, bottom-up interventions was recently designed and implemented to help frail older people live at home longer. As the effectiveness of these interventions may vary between different population groups according to their long-term care needs, they must be evaluated by comparison with a control group that has similar needs. METHODS: The goal was to identify target groups for these interventions and to establish control groups with similar needs and to explore, per group, the extent to which the utilization of long-term care is matched to needs. We merged two databases: a clinical prospective database and the routine administrative database for healthcare reimbursements. Through Principal Component Analysis followed by Clustering, the intervention group was first stratified into disability profiles. Per profile, comparable control groups for clinical variables were established, based on propensity scores. Using chi-squared tests and logistic regression analysis, long-term care utilization at baseline was then compared per profile and group studied. RESULTS: Stratification highlighted five disability profiles: people with low-level limitations; people with limitations in instrumental activities of daily life and low-level of cognitive impairment; people with functional limitations; people with functional and cognitive impairments; and people with functional, cognitive, and behavioral problems. These profiles made it possible to identify long-term care needs. For instance, at baseline, those who needed more assistance with hygiene tasks also received more personal nursing care (P < 0.05). However, there were some important discrepancies between the need for long-term care and its utilization: while 21% of patients who were totally dependent for hygiene tasks received no personal nursing care, personal nursing care was received by 33% of patients who could perform hygiene tasks. CONCLUSIONS: The disability profiles provide information on long-term care needs but not on the extent to which those needs are met. To assess the effectiveness of interventions, controls at baseline should have similar disability profiles and comparable long-term care utilization. To allow for large comparative effectiveness studies, these dimensions should ideally be available in routine databases. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12913-019-4240-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.