Relocations within innovative care concepts for older people

Residents of nursing homes or assisted living facilities have to relocate more often nowadays. This trend has several causes. Traditional buildings are partly outdated and do no longer meet the demands of today. Long-term care organizations therefore often choose to reconstruct locations or built new facilities. This enables them to provide better care and support to residents and their relatives. This leads to the reconstruction of traditional nursing homes to innovative long-term care facilities, such as green care farms or small-scale living, which use a person-centered approach to facilitate quality of life. At this moment, it is not clear what the impact of a relocation is on residents within long-term care. In particular, knowledge about the impact and experience of a relocation to an innovative care concept on older people, relatives and long-term care staff is missing. This study intends to gain insight into the experiences and impact of a relocation to an innovative care concept on residents, relatives and personnel and intends to compare this to relocations within the traditional long-term care.
This study aims to gain insight into the experiences with and impact of relocations to innovative long-term care facilities and how these differ from relocations to traditional long-term care facilities. We will use an observational design, in which relocations will be monitored. Interviews, questionnaires and document-analyses will be performed combined with observations of daily lives of residents. The study will include locations that plan a relocation, either to an innovative or traditional long-term care facility. During this relocation, we will follow the residents, their relatives and long-term care staff four weeks before relocating, two weeks after relocating and six months after relocating. During these measurements, the daily functioning of residents will be measured through observations and questionnaires. Furthermore, two weeks after the relocation interviews will be carried out with residents, their relatives and employees to measure their experiences with the relocation. Locations will be recruited through the academic networks of long-term care (including the AWO-L) or through own registration.

The main goal of this project is to gain insight into the experiences with and impact of relocations to innovative long-term care facilities in residents and their informal caregivers.
Two research questions will be addressed:
1. What are the experiences of residents, informal caregivers, long-term care staff and the management concerning relocations to innovative long-term care facilities compared to relocations from a traditional to another traditional long-term care facility?
2. What are the effects of relocations to innovative long-term care facilities on residents and their informal caregivers compared to relocations from a traditional to another traditional long-term care facility?

Four weeks before relocating, two weeks after relocating, 6 months after relocating