Top 5 Reasons You Shouldn’t Ignore Long-Term Care Data in Your Research

The number of patients entering long-term care facilities is expected to double in the next 20+ years. Real-world data sets can provide valuable insights for this high-risk population by assisting researchers with a variety of information, including expanded drug discovery and development, disease progression in aging populations, COVID-19 infection data, the impact of mental health diseases, and more. Not only do these anonymized data sets provide highly-detailed information such as daily weights and BMI, drug regimens, and disease progression, but their longitudinal aspects provide researchers and clinicians the volume of information they require for a deeper understanding of disease patterns, treatment outcomes, and patient demographics. Here are the top five reasons long-term care data is important to researchers:

1. The Numbers Are Increasing … Fast

The number of long-term care residents is expected to reach 27 million in the U.S. by 2050. As life expectancy increases, the importance of research on older adults grows. These data sets capture an immense amount of information on a growing number of patients and they empower researchers with evidence and references on disease progression, medication effectiveness, and which treatments had the best outcomes.

2. Significantly Higher Medication Adherence

Unlike older adults who live on their own, people in long-term care facilities have significantly higher medication adherence. This consistency of data embodies more complete health outcomes and more accurate data about adverse effects, side effects, and drug interactions. Since long-term care residents typically suffer from multiple diseases and chronic conditions, they take an average of 7 medications per resident, which helps researchers and the biopharma industry uncover valuable data points on medication use, effective symptom management, and more.

3. The Quality of the Data

While data from health insurance claims reflect healthcare services provided to a patient and the medications and therapies either prescribed or covered by insurance companies, Electronic Health Record (EHR) data reflects the actual detailed medical records from healthcare providers. This format allows measurable, actionable data and treatment patterns, disease progression, comorbidities, and laboratory results for greater utility and value to researchers and life science professionals. This highly detailed, longitudinal data reflects a robust asset for developing therapies and treatments, observing medication side and adverse effects or interactions, as well as cost of treatment and outcome.

4. Dual Eligibility

Long-term care facilities are not subject to Medicare Part D coverage gap rebates or Medicaid 23.1% rebates. Instead, many residents in long-term care facilities have the financial advantage of no out-of-pocket expenses for brand-name treatments, especially those under LIS/Dual-eligible programs. As a result of this unique situation, data from long-term care facilities help researchers and life science professionals understand drug interactions and fuel new drug discovery.

5. Variety of Applications and Use Cases

Long-term care data has a variety of applications and use cases, including:

• Studying patient populations with high unmet medical needs in order to understand treatment patterns, gain insights into healthcare utilization, and cost
• Assessing commercial strategies and empowering commercial teams in biopharma and healthcare industries to optimize organizational changes and fully understand how the value of a therapy is captured and expressed to identify potential target markets, optimize pricing and reimbursement strategies, and develop evidence-based value propositions for stakeholders
• Identifying cohorts that match specific inclusion and exclusion criteria for clinical trials, improving recruitment efficiency, and trial timelines while ensuring the enrollment of appropriate patients, and increasing the likelihood of successful trial outcomes
• Monitoring real-world data to identify potential adverse events, detect safety signals, and assess the long-term safety, and efficacy of drugs and therapies
• Tracking and flagging overprescribing drugs to treat mental health problems, and diagnoses

Extensive and detailed real-world datasets with high quality, longitudinal information can be constructed through anonymized EHR patient data collected from long-term care facilities. At PointClickCare, more than 70% of all skilled nursing facilities and long-term care facilities use our systems, providing valuable data and real-time insights. As a result, accelerated timelines and successful research objectives are possible regardless of the phase of development. We help make the impossible a reality.

Whether it’s to guide quality improvement initiatives, identify opportunities for preventative interventions, or to support evidence-based decision-making to enhance overall health outcomes of seniors in long-term care, we’re here to help.