Abstract
Assessment of the Health Related Quality of Life (HRQoL) of residents of an Aged Care Facility (ACF) was undertaken as part of an evaluation of the Health Interventions for Seniors (HIPS) project. HIPS sought to determine the effectiveness of a Nurse Practitioner Candidate (NPC) through comparison of the HRQoL across sites between residents who had access to the NPC (intervention group) and those who did not (comparison group). Two HRQoL instruments, the Australian Quality of Life 4D (AQoL-4D) and the EuroQol-3D (EQ-5D 3 level) were used to measure quality of life of residents of both groups. Aged Care Funding Instrument (ACFI) scores were also collected. Hypothesis: residents with access to HIPS have a higher HRQoL and at lesser risk of decline in health and subsequent hospitalisation. Results of multivariate regression analysis suggested that although residents of the intervention group were more frail (i.e. significantly higher ACFI score), they have comparable HRQoL with the control group at baseline. Additionally, there is weak evidence of increasing HRQoL within the intervention over time, compared to the control group.