Tutorials

This tutorial is designed to give users a step-by-step guide to using FLoSC-PAD and the interpretation of the reports.

The data used in this tutorial is generated by computer simulation. You can download the dataset here. Please have a look at the format of the data in reference to the Data requirement section of the FLoSC-PAD User Guide. Also notice that, for illustration purpose, four additional records containing missing values are appended to the simulated data.

Suppose today is 01/02/2008. A local council in the Greater London area is interested in using FLoSC to forecast the cost due to their current known commitment today until the end of next financial year (i.e. 01/04/2009). Relevant data from 01/04/2004 to 01/02/2008 can be extracted and a necessary process can be carried out using FLoSC-PAD so that the final data will be compatible with the data requirements of FLoSC.

Start FLoSC-PAD. Copy-and-paste the tutorial data into FLoSC-PAD, delete any previous data if necessary. Verify that the heading and order of the columns are consistent with the conditions set out in the Data requirement section. Your screen should look like the following.

Please ensure that the labels of both types of care, starting/end dates related to the Data Analysis Period and the Threshold value are entered as well as the residents’ data.

FLoSC-PAD produces the results in the form of additional worksheets within the current workbook.

The data, i.e. data to be used in a FLoSC run, weekly cost per resident included in the analysis and age at admission;
The data cleaning process, i.e. records deleted: numbers and related reasons, number of records in the working dataset.

This report contains information on data cleaning, which is conducted before any analysis is carried out. In the above table, we can see that 3 records were deleted due to a mix of missing values -- 1 missing "type of care"; 1 missing "end reason" and 2 records with missing dates (i.e. 2 missing “dates of admission” and 1 missing “date of discharge”).

There is 1 record deleted due to incorrect dates, i.e. date of admission is greater than the date of discharge.

4 records are deleted due to the Threshold, i.e. the difference in between changing types of care is greater than 90 Days (the threshold specified for this tutorial).

In addition, 6 records are deleted due to the Data Analysis Period, i.e. 5 residents are discharged before the start of the Data Analysis Period and 1 resident admitted after the end of the Data Analysis Period.

Note: As outlined in the Data requirement section of the User Guide, FLoSC-PAD expects at most one record for a stay in each type of care.

After data cleaning and data selection based on subset criterion, the final working dataset contains 1064 records (i.e. in total, 13 records are deleted).

The subset of data extracted is also reported in the worksheet "FLoSC data" as shown in the following screenshot.

The data is prepared into the format expected by FLoSC. PLoS (i.e. previous length of stay), LoS (i.e. length of stay) and age at admission are calculated. The data is also recoded using the following coding scheme:

For end reason, "3" represents death in system; "-1" represents a resident is currently in system at the end of the data availability period; "-2" represents a resident has left the system alive, e.g. move out of the area, etc. For both PLoS and LoS, a non-negative number is expected (and -999 is used to signify missing value throughout). For Age at admission and Weekly cost, a non-negative number is expected and a blank is generated to signify missing value throughout (although the user has to enter “Missing” for the input data in the worksheet “Raw data”).

Initially, Type of care 1 refers to Residential care and Type of care 2 refers to Nursing care in FLoSC. As FLoSC deletes records with movement from Nursing care to Residential care (i.e. very few records), the user should be careful while coding the types of care (i.e. which type of care can chosen as Type of care 1).

FLoSC-PAD also generates a summary of the movement of residents during the Data Analysis Period. This is useful in giving an overview of how residents move within the LTC system and can help the user with coding types of care correctly.

Two different types of admission are considered. According to the diagram, there are 355 new admissions and 1 transfer from nursing care (i.e. Type of care 2) to Residential Care (i.e. Type of care 1). Residents are discharged either by being transferred to the second type of care, discharged alive or died. For Residential Care, 56 residents are transferred to Nursing care, 100 residents left the system alive and 91 residents died.

Further information on residents’ movements is provided in the following table:

There were 249 residents already in the LTC system at the start of the Data Analysis Period: 116 residents in Residential care and 133 residents in Nursing care. The total number of admissions to Residential care (respectively Nursing care) during that period is 356 (respectively 459) residents. The number of residents still living in the LTC system is also indicated: 225 residents in Residential care and 179 residents in Nursing care.

The worksheet “Data analysis report” contains also summary statistics on weekly cost and age at admission of the LTC residents.

Although the figures reported in the above tables are useful in general, the distribution of the Weekly Cost and the distribution of the age at admission are best presented as a graph. The following graphs are the histograms of Weekly Cost and age at admission for each type of care.

If the "Weekly Cost" for one type of care exceeds £ 5,000, a warning box will appear. In the following screenshot, the example is given for Nursing care.

The graphs will still be provided, however they might look a bit awful. It depends on the distribution of the "Weekly Cost" for each type of care.