Key components of the Community Specialist Team Older People service model – service user and stakeholder Consensus Building

The Community Specialist Team for Older People (CST OP) is a community based multidisciplinary team that offers assessment, support, and treatment for older people with complex care needs. The aim of the CST OP is to offer timely coordinated care delivered in one place to older people with complex care needs for a defined period of time. To ensure this model of care is implemented in line with best practice, there is a need to ensure that there is fidelity to the model and a consistency of design and implementation across sites to maximise operational and evaluation efforts. This study aims to develop a set of expert consensus-based statements on the core elements underpinning operational delivery, outcome measurement and evaluation of the CST OP model of care for older adults across Ireland. Research design responds to the co-creation of multi-level stakeholders’ insight to ensure service users, carers and experts informed the overall consensus building process; a modified real-time Delphi. Initial phases involved facilitation of World Café focus groups with an expert panel of 94 members, which were analysed and guided by national stakeholders to generate a series of statements on the core elements of the CST OP model of care. Final statements were incorporated into a real-time Delphi survey, which was shared to the expert panel group where participants used a 9-point Likert scale to rank a series of key domains. To further capture the insights of CST OP service users and cares, a questionnaire was developed in collaboration with the HSE Your Voice Matters platform, which was facilitated across CST OP sites across Ireland to ensure the PPI perspective is at the core of this consensus building process. The findings of this study will support a CST OP model of care which is consistent with and functions within the overall older person service model across an integrated care pathway in Ireland. Outcomes of this study will considerably strengthen the evidence-based underpinning the CST OP model of care to inform policy through a person-centred approach to provide operational guidelines that are transferable, consistent, and systematic to inform and implement key changes and improvements to this valuable model of care.